I've been wanting to do this episode for a loooong time. We covered episodes a long time ago on how children form social groups, and what happens when they exclude each other from play, but I wanted to do an episode exploring this issue related to slightly older girls, and from a cultural perspective. There are a lot of books and articles out there on the concept of mean girls and I wanted to understand more about that. Why are girls 'mean' to each other? Is it really a choice they're making...or is it a choice in response to a complex set of demands that we put on them about what it means to be female in our culture?   I had a really hard time finding anyone who was doing current research on the topic, and I mentioned this on a group coaching call in the Parenting Membership. A member, Caroline, said: “I know someone who can speak to this!”   Caroline had explored girls’ relationships in young adult literature for her master’s thesis, and knew Dr. Marnina Gonick’s work. Caroline introduced us, Dr. Gonick agreed to talk, and we all had a great conversation about girls’ role in our culture, how they are affected by it, and how they are agents of change as well. Dr. Gonick is Canada Research Chair in Gender and also holds a joint appointment in Education and Women’s Studies at Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She has written two books on the topic of girls’ relationships as well as a whole host of peer-reviewed articles.   Dr. Gonick also introduced me to an expert on boys’ relationships and we’re currently working to schedule an interview in a few weeks so there should be more to come on that soon!   Dr. Marnina Gonick’s Books: Young Femininity: Girlhood, Power and Social Change 2004th Edition Between Femininities: Ambivalence, Identity, and the Education of Girls (SUNY series, Second Thoughts: New Theoretical Formations) (Affiliate links).   Jump to highlights: (03:36) How changes in cultural norms influence our understanding of what it means to be a girl. (05:27) The way in which a change in behavior can help us understand the experiences of girls in general. (06:36) What does the school curriculum say about girls that causes them to be disadvantaged in schools. (08:35) How damaging it is for girls to be victims in a patriarchal society. (10:25) Why our social systems aren't necessarily organized around girls' well-being (12:50) The concept of girl power can be seen as either working for or against females. (14:46) The Social Barriers to Girl Power. (16:44) Criticisms of the movie "Mean Girls" and how they relate to the topic of empowering women in general. (18:34) The relational aggressiveness between boys and girls. (21:45) Why school cultures play a significant influence in bullying. (24:19) Finding acceptable ways for girls to show their relational aggression. (26:17) Factors that influences a child to become racist and disrespectful. (28:07) A growing number of institutions and businesses have taken an interest in the girl power movement. (31:34) Girls' ways of discovering their sense of identity/sexuality. (35:16) Different notions of sexiness in girls. (39:28) How heterosexuality highlights femininity. (41:24) Girls are going to be mean to each other human nature makes it inevitable. (43:37) How important is it to understand our feelings and the feelings of our children.   References: Aapola, S., Gonick, M., & Harris, A. (2005). Young femininity: Girlhood, power, and social change. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan Bethune, J., & Gonick, M. (2017). Schooling the mean girl: A critical discourse analysis of teacher resource materials. Gender and Education 29(3), 389-404. Dellasega, C., & Nixon, C. (2003). Girl wars: 12 strategies that will end female bullying. New York: Fireside. Gonick, M. (2003). Between femininities: Ambivalence, identity, and the education of girls. Albany: State University of New York Press. Gonick, M. (2004). VII. The ‘mean girl’ crisis: Problematizing representations of girls’ friendships. Feminism & Psychology 14(3), 395-400. Gonick, M. (2006). Between “girl power” and “Reviving Ophelia”: Constituting the neoliberal girl subject. NWSA Journal 18(2), 1-23. Gonick, M., Renold, E., Ringrose, J., & Weems, L. (2009). Rethinking agency and resistance: What comes after Girl Power? Girlhood Studies 2(2), 1-9. Gonick, M., Vanner, C., Mitchell, C., & Dugal, A. (2021). ‘We want freedom not just safety’: Biography of a Girlfesto as a strategic tool in youth activism. Young 29(2), 101-118. Goodwin, M.H. (2006). The hidden life of girls; Games of stance, status, and exclusion. Malden: Blackwell. Kehily, M.J., Ghaill, M.M.A., Epstein, D., & Redman, P. (2002). Private girls and public worlds: Producing femininities in the primary school. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 23(2), 167-177. Ludwig, T., & Adams, B. (2012). Confessions of a former bully. Decorah: Dragonfly. Renold, E. (2006). ‘They won’t let us play…unless you’re going out with one of them’: Girls, boys, and Butler’s ‘Heterosexual Matrix’ in the primary years. British Journal of Sociology of Education 27(4), 489-509.  

I read a lot of textbooks on parenting for my Master’s in Psychology (Child Development), I’ve read tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers on the topic, and part of the reason it’s hard work is that you can’t ever take things at face value.   In her now classic book Deconstructing Developmental Psychology, Dr. Erica Burman explodes a number of our ideas about child development by calling our attention to what’s really going on in an interaction, rather than what we think is going on.   For example, there’s a classic study where researchers put a baby on a solid surface which changed to glass, which had a design underneath implying that there was a ‘cliff edge’ that the baby would fall off if it went onto the glass. Researchers designed the experiment to find out what babies could understand about depth perception, but perhaps what they were actually testing was the extent to which the mother’s encouragement or lack of encouragement (and it was always the mother) could entice the baby across the ‘gap.’   These kinds of confounds exist throughout the research base, and because we’re not taught to look below the surface it can be easy to accept the results at face value. Dr. Burman specializes in looking below the surface so we can examine: what are we really trying to understand here? And in doing this, are we reinforcing the same old ideas about ‘success’ that aren’t really serving us now, never mind our children in the future?   Dr. Erica Burman’s Book: Deconstructing Developmental Psychology 3rd Edition Developments: Child, Image, Nation  (Affiliate links).   Jump to highlights: (01:12) The contribution of Professor Erica Burman to psychology. (03:05) First studies about Childhood Development. (04:26) How general philosophical questions are linked in child studies. (07:42) Childhood as a distinct social category. (09:10) The Concept of Human Interiority and Childhood. (10:17) Our hopes, fears, and fantasies about childhood reflect our ideas about our lost selves. (13:23) How the study of child development shifted when behaviorism came into play. (16:28) We assume psychology is connected with child development. (18:27) Importance of Democratic Parenting in our society. (19:57) Developmental researchers oppressed working mothers and middle-class mothers. (22:23) Impacts of authoritarian regimes in our parenting. (27:19) Using visual cliff as an experiment in understanding depth perception in children. (29:06) A child is functioning within a dynamic system of people and objects and everything around it. (31:02) Mother’s appear as the sort of a presumed natural environment to children. (33:11) Nuclear family performs ideological functions for Capitalism. (37:00) Whether or not spanking should be banned. (38:09) The ways environments inhibit certain behaviors. (39:19) How welfare policies have affected families. (42:27) Discussing the important discourses in parenting’s social and political issues in the book DDP.   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"]   Emma 00:04 Hi, I’m Emma, and I’m listening from the UK we all want our children to lead fulfilled lives. But we’re surrounded by conflicting information and clickbait headlines that leave us wondering what to do as parents. The Your Parenting Mojo podcast is still scientific research on parenting and child development into tools parents can actually use everyday in their real lives with their real children. If you’d like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a free infographic on the 13 reasons your child isn’t listening to you and what to do about each one, just head on over to YourParentingmojo.com/subscribe, and pretty soon you’re going to get tired of hearing my voice read this intro so come and record one yourself at YourParentingmojo.com/recordtheintro   Jen Lumanlan 00:45 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we’re going to take a dive into a topic that cuts across many of the ideas that we discuss here on the podcast. We’re going to take a critical look at the topic of Developmental Psychology as a whole and what we can learn about it when we raise our eyes up off the specific topics like theory of mind, and language development, and attachment that we often spend a lot of time delving into and consider the topics that these sit within. My guest for the conversation is Professor Erica Berman. Professor Berman is Professor of Education at the University of Manchester, an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society and the United Kingdom Council of Psychotherapists, and a registered Group Analyst. She trained as a developmental psychologist and is well known as a critical developmental psychologist specializing in innovative and activist qualitative research. Her research is focused on critical development and educational psychology, feminist and postcolonial theory, childhood studies on critical mental health practice, particularly around gender and cultural issues. Much of her work addresses the connections between emotions, mental health, and individual and social change. She’s a past chair of the Psychology of Women’s section of the British Psychological Society. And in 2016, she was awarded an Honorary Lifetime Fellowship at the British Psychological Society in recognition of her contribution to psychology. She’s associate editor of the Sage Encyclopedia of Childhood and Childhood Studies and the author of a number of books, most significantly, Deconstructing Developmental Psychology. And since it seems as though friends of the book have the right to call it DDP, we’re going to go ahead and do that here too. DDP is now in its third edition, and was honored with a special edition of the journal feminism and psychology discussing the impact of the book on the 20th anniversary of the publication of the first edition of the book, which really critiques mainstream theories and research methods to help us understand whether research on child development tells us more about the child, the researchers or the social environment that both of these exists within. So whether you’re expecting a child or you’re a new parent, perhaps you’re newer to my work, or whether you already have a child who’s getting on in years, and you’ve been a listener for a while, you’re going to find something new in this conversation that helps you step outside these usual topics and ask well, how did we get here? And where are we going? And even is this where we want to go? Welcome Professor Berman. It’s such an honor to have you here.   Erica Burman 02:55 Thank you for inviting me.   Jen Lumanlan 02:57 So maybe we can start with a little topic at the beginning of all of this the study of child development. How do we start studying children? How did all this come about?   Erica Burman 03:05 Well, yes, it’s not a small question. And I guess there are different ways of telling that story of how child development came about. The conventional story that you will read about in child development textbooks usually talks about the emergence of the Child Study movement. In fact, many men of a certain kind of class background started to take an interest in their own children, studying them in some detail. So the first studies about children and childhood are of a sort of semi-formal kind, observational studies by the fathers, not the mothers, otherwise occupied and not intellectual enough to engage in this esteemed new area of study. So their diary studies, and indeed, that methodological approach, remain a very important one for the study of early childhood in general, especially very early childhood and language development, and so on. So the child study movement, in a sense, is both the beginning of the study of psychology and also psychiatry. And in a way, slight child psychology and psychiatry really were elaborated alongside each other, almost indistinguishable. The questions that were motivating those first studies and inquiries, it’s fair to say, I think we’re not really specifically about children. It was an interest in the study of the child as a way to explore much more general philosophical questions. Questions about nature and nurture themselves are sort of laid on to older questions about original sin or free will, etc. And we continue to live with those big philosophical questions that people tend to look to the study of childhood to solve, and I have to admit that, in a way, that’s what kind of brought me to study developmental psychology. It wasn’t that I was interested in children particularly, I just sort of felt like a true modern rationalist that this was a way to sort of engage in, you know, very general interests. I had was the case for Piaget, who was motivated to study, but it wasn’t just him that the origins of knowledge and how it developed through the study of the child. So were these kinds of philosophical questions. And people were sort of starting to explore them alongside a set of political concerns of the time and of the political structures of the time with the rise of the nation state and so on about the state of the population, about molding, in a sense, sort of knowing about and also controlling the future workforce, future citizens, etc. Now, all of that is, I think, sort of one version of the story of the origins of child development that is generally quite widely accepted. I think there’s another narrative, I would want to add in their second one, which I’ve already alluded to, about the rise of the nation state. All of this was happening alongside imperialist wars going on. I mean, these gentlemen who were studying children, but also the gentlemen who were going off and studying the flora and fauna, were to them exotic places and bringing them back. You know, if you can look around the English countryside, it’s full of plants that were brought from all over the world that these gentlemen tried to recreate it in their land that they owned, so that, you know, Britain’s full of rhododendron, but that’s the national plant of the Himalayas, Nepal, I think it is. So what was happening was that, in a way, the study of children emerged quite late in the scene, because really, the flora and fauna were of more interest for quite a long time. And it was only when these other kinds of political agendas started to surface about managing populations, including colonized populations, that children became a good route by which to think about that, and the management of parenting. But all of this, of course, was happening. It’s not just about psychology or child psychology, it was happening alongside the rise of other social sciences, you could say, like sociology and social policy. And I think it’s also worth bearing in mind that, as I said, these child studies, in a sense, seem to kick it off. So that’s the sort of second narrative, I think it’s important. And this third one, I think, is important in thinking about why childhood came to be seen as a distinct category. I mean, that’s where we need to sort of think more broadly, historically, and culturally and think about how the invention of childhood, we know that there is a history of childhood and what that means from Philippi raise onwards, that the invention of the idea of childhood as a distinct social category, rather than something that’s integrated in daily life, that coincided with emerging ideas within and from European culture, about the idea of the individual and that individual has a sort of interiority itself. Now that is really something that in terms of our ideas about ourselves, and awareness of ourselves really kind of starts from the mid-18th century onwards, these ideas about childhood were emerging alongside the idea of the individual and alongside the idea that that individual has an interiority you know, some sense of awareness of itself can reflect on separately from others. And that was emerging alongside other disciplines like the ideas associated with what we would now recognize to be biology and, equally at the same time, psychoanalysis, the ideas that then eventually were to be sort of named by Freud as psychoanalysis, so ideas about nature and ideas about history. And this is where I mean, I’m very convinced by the account that Carolyn Steedman wrote a long time ago about it’s called strange dislocations, childhood, and the idea of human interiority. I think it’s sort of 18 something Tto 19 something, historians always do that. So you have to situate the interest in childhood alongside these other sorts of developments in people’s ideas about the course of history, having a cause, having a going somewhere and having consequences. And I think all that invites, you know, several other kinds of questions. The first one is that when we study children, are we only studying children? I mean, it’s one of the claims I make in deconstructing developmental psychology, that a child always involves constituting positions for others around that child, whether it’s the proximal positions of the caregivers, the gender positions of all of that, or family or the state or whatever. So we can’t abstract the child from a set of relationships. And you can see, I’m a psychotherapist as well. Our fantasies of our lost selves, or our better selves, or our true selves, something like that, that gets played out in people’s hopes and fears and fantasies about childhood. And that’s all been going on for quite a long time, from the mid 18th century onwards. Because if you look at that history that Sally Shuttleworth writes about in of European childhood, there were always sort of crisis about child labor, about hothouse children and then being cramming and there’s always been moral panics, you might say about children’s sexuality, that’s always been a difficult area, etc, wider historical view is useful to see, generally speaking, the sort of hot issues we encounter in our day are not new, but are just a new take on a very long standing set of themes. But also, I think there are consequences for thinking about that the ways our fantasies about ourselves get tied up with what we think about and want for children. Those typically get in the way, in my opinion of our engagement with the actual embodied specific children in front of us. And I think I say this quite a lot in the book. You know, the third issue that arises, given that there is so much going on in the study of the child, is genuine confusion about what the unit of development is, as well as what the model of time is. I mean, are we talking about individual development? Are we talking about child development? Are we talking about national development because all of these concerns are all international development, they all get wrapped up into the study of the child in a way that I think becomes remarkably inattentive to particular children. Jen Lumanlan 11:58 Yeah, and I’ve been doing a lot of research on resilience over the last few days. And I think it really comes out there that many of the criteria that we use to judge children’s resilience are related to things like their executive function capabilities, their grades, their employment, their criminality, or lack thereof. And it’s pretty clear that the state has a very vested interest in a particular outcome here. And to the extent that they can support development in the younger years, and have it be cost effective later on, then, yeah, we’re talking about the development of the state, as we’re talking about how to support individual children. And of course, on the international stage, it plays out in similar statistics and the league tables of standardized test results, I guess, would be the most obvious one that comes to mind that absolutely, clearly, there’s this huge framework that it all sits within that we’re not just looking at the child, this has so many connections to how we think of ourselves and our place within society as well. And we just sort of reduce it back and think, Okay, if we can go back to the source, we’ll make it easier to understand, when actually maybe it introduces a whole bunch of other concerns. But I’m wondering if it’s possible to briefly trace how our understanding of children’s development has shifted, particularly since the 60s, I guess, when behaviorism was sort of the in way of seeing things. I don’t know if you want to go any further back than that. But I think there have been a few really key shifts that have happened since then. I’d love to get your perspective on them.   Erica Burman 13:19 Yeah, I suppose I would want to go a bit further back. Jen Lumanlan 13:22 I thought you might Erica Burman 13:23 A very psychoanalytically oriented study of the child. It was before, in an anglophone context, now quite a strict division between psychology and psychoanalysis. Although in other parts of the world, a lot of psychology is very psychoanalytic. So one has to be careful about the claims here. So those early child studies interested in emotions. And you can see that in Piaget, he was at of that whole sort of tranche of work. Although it was a bit later, he wasn’t interested in testing children, he was interested in trying to formulate the whole structure of children’s thought, and I don’t think he did it sufficiently relationally. But I think he was certainly doing some very interesting things that I did do by Piaget and sort of, like clinical or critical study myself at some point, as well as some, you know, engaging in a lot of the critiques. So before behaviorism, there was the sight of a few, like a very, sort of psycho dynamically oriented understanding of children. I mean, and it’s also worth saying in relation to psychiatry, too, we think of psychiatry as being very medical and empiricist and behavioral, but actually, the first DSM was very psychoanalytically informed. It’s important not to forget that sort of psychoanalytic history, because people kick back against it and don’t want to remember it, but it has its traces in various ways that I think we do need to be aware of in positive and negative ways. Social Work also used to be incredibly psychoanalytic both in the United States in North America and in Britain. And now it’s very hard to find traces of that. But It’s important to remember that there have been different models. Again, I’d like to just having made that point, step back once again, and say there’s one version of that story that you could...

For the first time, in this episode I bow out and and let listeners Jenny and Emma take over, who wanted to share how they’ve been supporting each other over the last few months. They started from pretty different points: Emma wasn’t having parenting struggles, but often over-communicated with her husband and he would stonewall in response, agreeing to whatever she asked so she would stop talking. Then he would resist later, and she couldn’t understand why…because he had agreed, right? Jenny’s sleep had been disturbed by her child for more than four years…she was exhausted, and had no idea how to deal with her rage-filled kindergartener who would hit her whenever he was upset. Neither of them had much confidence that being on a Zoom call together for 40 minutes a week would help them. Emma and her husband now communicate in a way that meets both of their needs, and can navigate the challenges that come up with their preschooler. Jenny is sleeping! And she has learned how deep listening and true empathy help her son to feel really heard…and incidents that used to lead to 45 minute meltdowns that would disrupt the rest of the day are now over in 10 minutes, and are actually connecting for them. Jenny and Emma did all this with a bit of information from me…but mostly by being fully present for each other in a small ‘village’ of parents, inside the slightly larger village of the Parenting Membership. If you want help to break down the changes you want to make into tiny manageable steps and be held (gently!) accountable for taking them (or adjusting course if needed…), we’d love to have you join the three of us plus a group of likeminded parents in the membership. Get the information you need and the support to actually implement it, all in what members call “the least judgmental corner of the internet.” Click the image below to learn more about the Parenting Membership. Join the waitlist to get notified when doors reopen in May 2025. Jump to highlights:(01:00) Jenny and Emma came up with the idea to record an episode for the podcast to talk about how their parenting has changed over the last year.(01:55) Emma wasn’t having major problems, but wanted to be prepared for the challenges that may happen down the road.(02:36) Jenny was struggling because she hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in 4 ½ years…and now prioritizes herself through the support of Emma and the members of the ACTion group.(03:55) An open Invitation to join the Parenting Membership.(04:45) Because Emma is a high achiever, she imagined parenthood to be a breeze.(06:57) Jenny believed that if you are prepared and serene, and you bring this calm energy to your pregnancy, you will have an easy child.(08:24) The lack of understanding of our values is what causes us to be conflicted about becoming parents.(12:00) Our child’s big feelings are their way of letting us know that they are not okay.(14:30) It's great to have a community who we can trust, and who will support and respect our values(16:30) The ACTion group conversation once a week gives parents a foundation to parent more intentionally(18:26) Emma used the problem-solving method to find a solution for her child's resistance during nail cutting by trying to hypothesize her child’s feelings.(20:17) Needs can be met when you remove the ‘shoulds.’(25:31) Jenny’s parenting has been a lot less tense over the past year and a half, which was a wonderful surprise.(30:48) Jenny saw big changes when she used a deep listening technique with her son during an episode of intense anger and frustration, which ended the episode much more quickly than usual!(37:25) It's life-changing to see a profound change in our children and ourselves when both of our needs are fulfilled.Read Full TranscriptEmma  00:04Hi, I'm Emma, and I'm listening from the UK we all want our children to lead fulfilled lives. But we're surrounded by conflicting information and clickbait headlines that leave us wondering what to do as parents. The Your Parenting Mojo podcast distills scientific research on parenting and child development into tools parents can actually use every day in their real lives with their real children. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a free infographic on the 13 reasons your child isn't listening to you, and what to do about each one, just head on over to your parentingmojo.com/subscribe. And pretty soon, you're going to get tired of hearing my voice read this intro. So come and record one yourself at your parentingmojo.com/record the intro. Jen Lumanlan  00:46Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today we're going to do something I've never done before in 150+ episodes of the show, which is that apart from this introduction, I'm not in the show at all. Two listeners, Jenny and Emma reached out to ask if they could record an episode about how their experience in parenting has shifted over the last year or so. And I gave a very cautious acceptance not really having much of an idea of what they wanted to discuss. I've interacted with each of them but not together. And I don't know much about their relationship. And I have to say it's a bit strange to say their names together because my full name is Jenny and my sister's name is Emma. So this is like a different Jenny and Emma show. And then when I listened to the recording of their conversation, I realized how close they've grown over the last year, they both happen to be in the parenting membership. And they're in the same ACTion group, which is a group of up to five parents who meet with an experienced peer leader. And I think that many parents think that that experience isn't really going to be very useful, especially when they're already pretty sick of being on Zoom calls. Jenny and Emma were in very different places in parenting, when they joined the membership, Emma's son was still pretty young. And she and her husband thought, well, we're not really having any problems now. So should we actually spend money on this. And they eventually decided to do it because they wanted to be prepared for challenges that happen down the road. And then challenges did go up. And they felt prepared for them because they'd already been practicing the tools. And when it turned out that some of their big challenges were actually in communication between Emma and her husband, because he was agreeing to do things he didn't really want to do just so she would stop explaining, we had a consult where we were able to identify some of those issues so they could really see what each other's needs were and how to communicate to meet each other's needs. I've seen them both on coaching calls since that consult, but I hadn't talked with them about that specific issue. And I had no idea until I heard this recording how transformational that experience had been. And Jenny sort of came into the membership with her hair on fire because she basically hadn't had a full night of sleep in over four years. And she had very specific ideas about what parenting was going to look like. And it was actually being in that group with Emma and the other parents that gave her permission in a way to prioritize yourself and take the actions that she needed to get sleep on the right track, which freed up her energy for other things, which sounds so incredibly simple, but she hadn't been able to actually do it without that extra support. Jenny tells us about a tool that she learned in the membership called Radical listening, and how such a simple yet profound practice has shifted how her child is able to be in their relationship. And the side benefit is that his big expressions of anger that used to take 45 minutes to work through and really interrupt their day are now over and done within 10 minutes. And they move on with the rest of their day. And now Jenny and Emma have grown so close, they're invested in each other's success. And they know they can show up in tears and looking at a complete wreck and know they won't be judged and they can share their successes and know it won't be a competition about who's doing better than whom because they care about each other so much, Emma certainly and probably Jenny to figure that most of the value they were going to get in the membership would be in the materials that I produce. And yes, they've certainly learned things from that that have helped them. But it's both humbling and wonderful for me to see how they've actually become skilled at using these ideas because of what they've learned from each other. If you'd like to really feel like part of a village and get this kind of support in your own parenting journey, the parenting memberships open for enrollment right now until midnight Pacific this coming Wednesday, May 25. sliding scale pricing is available and so is a money back guarantee. You can find more information at your parentingmojo.com/parentingmembership. And now let's hear from Jenny and Emma themselves. Jenny  04:16I'm Jenny and I grew up in the US but now live in Europe with my husband and we have a six year old son. Emma  04:24I'm Emma and I have a nearly three year old and I live in the UK Jenny  04:30Super. I do have some questions just to help kick things off. So I’m going to start byasking you Emma, what were your expectations of parenthood before becoming a parent? And then once you got there, what was the reality?  Jenny  04:43I think I expected parenting to be a lot easier as an overachiever in life, I sort of thought well, if I do enough learning in life about it beforehand, then I'll just breeze into it. It'll be a breeze but it would be something more straightforward then it actually is, I'm a teacher by training. So I felt that having the experience with children would be beneficial. I think it has been in some way. But it's been quite a journey actually separating the way that I want to interact with my child from how I've been trained as a teacher, because a school is a very specific setup where the needs are not necessarily looking at the child. And it's not the focus isn't the relationship between the adults and the children, about the academic achievements of the children, as I've been a parent for longer, I have realized that my values don't necessarily align that closely with the goals of the school system. And so my parenting has diverged quite a lot from that as well. Jenny  05:41And parenting is at the end of it really all about relationships, right. And that's a very different goal. If you're looking to nurture a relationship versus trying to get a room full of 20 students to learn the same thing.  Emma  05:56Yeah, absolutely. I think it was a big shock for us as well, my husband's a teacher as well. And I think he has a similar feeling that he thought it was just something that it'd be hard, but we'd be okay. And he sort of said before that his White male privilege, he sort of thought, Well, yeah, there's been lots of things in life that people say hard, but it's been okay. And then parenting sort of hit him in the face, like, oh, no, wait, wait, those things are easy because of my privilege. This is just hard. Emma  05:56Universally hard.  Emma  05:59Yeah. How about you?  Jenny  06:01A lot of what you just said feels familiar to me, although my background is really different. I was in the corporate worlds in finance, and my upbringing, and and my work experience, it was definitely this feeling of like, if you work hard enough, you're going to be able to achieve anything. And of course, that applies to parenting too. And for me, I have a track record of when things get busy, and the workload increases, I just sleep less and I barrel through and like depend on my stamina. And that set me up for a very unhealthy start with my child. I thought that if you are prepared and you are serene, and you kind of bring this calm energy to your pregnancy, then you're gonna have quote, unquote, easy child, and that an easy child is desirable. There was a lot of talk within my family circle about that, because there have been some easy kids and some not easy kids and all this value wrapped up with having an easy baby. And then my kid arrived and didn't sleep through the night for four and a half years, and was definitely not what I would qualify as the typical easy child. And there was a lot of shame for me in that like, oh, gosh, I must not have been calm enough or secure in my own approach to mothering or whatever it is. And yeah, I just I kind of set myself up for a fall with all of these ideas I had about parenting and and the reality is so different. I also just assumed that it being the 21st century, like, of course, we're going to be smashing gender norms in our family. And that very quickly fell absolutely down when my son was nursing and only wanted me and I ended up doing all the night feeds and all the night stuff. And like just getting to the point where I was so exhausted, I couldn't even articulate my frustration with that situation or do anything about it. So yeah, it was a pretty big wake up call once my son was here. Emma  08:22Yeah, I think that was me as well. I don't think I understood my values, and how much they conflicted on becoming a parent, because, you know, similarly, as a staunch feminist in the workplace, I had certain ideas about how I thought things would play out, you know, I thought I'd be back at work.  Jenny  08:38Yeah.  Emma  08:40Everything that I used to be that life wouldn't have much changed. And actually, the reality is that didn't work for us is a difficult thing, coming to terms with how much your identity has had to shift and realizing that actually, your order of priorities might be different to what you previously thought. Jenny  08:57Absolutely. I don't know if you had some of this too. But I also absolutely thought that I would be back to some sort of work within months, and just the total lack of sleep and constant nursing, put an end to that thought really quickly. And I found myself actually grappling with some inner misogyny and like lots of this kind of work and productivity above everything else training in me. Like I'd be out at the playground with the carriage with my son sitting like, Am I allowed to be here? Shouldn't I be in an office earning money? This feels really weird. feeling like I was playing hooky from life by with my child and things like we gotten to this very stereotypical situation where my husband has become the main breadwinner and for a while I couldn't work but then I was working just part time and me really thinking of it in terms of the financial side of things, valuing his time valuing his sleep and feeling like the work that I did do the sleep that I got, none of it was as important As him and having a lot of anger about that, but that wasn't what he was saying. That's not how he was acting. But it was always an internal process within me that felt like, Okay, now that I'm just a mother, I'm worthless, which I could see and I could feel that it was not a productive thought to be having. But I couldn't stop it for a while, like I was just kind of seeing it rise up in me and realizing that, oh, gosh, what does this say about my beliefs about women about caretaking about my own mother, it took me a long time to kind of get through just the negative feelings about it to someplace that I could think about it more objectively and change my perspective a bit. But that was also something I never expected to have to confront in the role of parent. Emma  10:43How long was that going on? Before you join the membership, what triggered it or Jenny  10:46it was something that I was dealing with for quite a lot of the time and it was compounded, I think also just by exhaustion, but that's not what triggered me joining the membership, I came to the membership relatively late, my son had just started kindergarten. And we were going through an acute phase of big feelings. I had another mother warned me that when my child goes to kindergarten, like the first couple months, you're not going to recognize your kid, because it's such a big transition for them, they're going to come home and just have horrendous behavior, because it's just how they process and she said, but like, just hang in there. And after a couple of months, it's all going to even out.  We were four or five months in, it was just getting more and more intense. My son would come home at lunch time every day. And I felt like the smallest thing would set him off, he would color outside the lines. And there would be an explosion of anger pointed at me. Sometimes he would get physical, it would take us like a half an hour, 40 minutes, 45 minutes to get through, like where he could get past the anger. And we could reconnect and be okay, for half an hour an hour until the next thing would set him off. And it was like this every day. And I knew enough from the parenting content that I'd read about or listened to that emotions and big behavior like that. It's communication. It's your child letting you know that they're not okay. And I got that with my head. But even though I wouldn't show it to my son, I was really struggling not to feel angry back at him. Anger is a really tough emotion for me. Historically, I have never felt it. And suddenly I was feeling it every day, but swallowing it. And it was friggin exhausting. And yeah, I was trying different things. But nothing was really working. And yeah, just all this swallowing of my own emotion and all this frustration and all like seeing him struggle and being in so much emotional discomfort that was going on along with me also having some personal issues. I was kind of having a bit of a burnout at the same period. So I was basically a mess when I joined the parenting membership, how about you? Emma  13:00Ah, my story was quite different. So our little was still quite young. He was now 18 months-ish, and we were about a year into lockdown. I mean, obviously, it...

Adrianna and Tim had read all the parenting books. (And I mean ALL the books.) But NOTHING seemed to be working. They were still feeling frustrated with their kids on a very regular basis. And their kids were fighting what seemed like every second of the day. They joined the Parenting Membership last May, and the transformation our community has seen in them has been profound. The shift started after we had a consult about their youngest daughter’s difficult behavior, which we realized was a sign of her unmet needs. (I do these 1:1 (or 1:2!) consults on a regular basis for members when I see them struggling with an issue that just can’t be addressed in writing.) Ideas percolated. They increased the amount of 1:1 time they were spending with her, doing things she liked to do. They attended a couple of group coaching calls and we talked more about their specific situation. Things improved a bit. But then it all came to a head when Adrianna posted in the community about her children’s fighting, which had become more intense than ever. A whole lot of parents chimed in with ideas to support them, which are grounded in the ideas I’d previously discussed with her - but sometimes you need to hear things in a different way, with stories from parents who have just recently been through the same difficult stuff you’re experiencing, and they made it out the other side. Suddenly something clicked for Adrianna. She started to see her children’s needs in a way she hadn’t before, and she started having super explicit conversations with them about their needs, and also her needs. And then the magic started to happen, firstly in interactions between either Adrianna or Tim and their oldest child, Bodhi:  Then the two children began using these problem solving tools between themselves. All of a sudden these two children who had literally been tearing each other’s hair out could identify their own needs, and each other’s needs, and find solutions that work for both of them. And they’re five and three years old!  And all of this happened in what Adrianna calls the most supportive, least judgmental corner of the internet:  I invited Adrianna and Tim to tell us about their journey on the podcast. Their response - delivered in unison - when I asked them: “So you’d read all the books, and you had so many doubts that ANYTHING could work for you…so why on earth did you join the membership?” was priceless. Parenting Membership If parenting feels really hard, and it seems like you’ve read all the books and you’ve asked for advice in free communities and you’re tired of having to weed through all the stuff that isn’t aligned with your values to get to the few good nuggets, then the Parenting Membership will help you out.Click the banner to learn more and sign up. Join the waitlist to get notified when doors reopen in May 2025. Shownotes:(01:46) Overview of Adrianna and Tim's membership journey. (04:18) An open invitation to join the Parenting Membership.(06:06) Growing up in a dysfunctional household was not uncommon for either Adrianna or Tim.(08:57) Adrianna and Tim believed they were the best parents of the year until they began to sink.(10:10) The anger and irrationality that Tim displays toward Adrianna as a result of his frustrations.(11:03) How Adrianna was managing her mental health issues while also navigating the challenges presented by her two challenging children.(12:45) Tim and Adrianna are frustrated since they've tried everything to make parenthood work.(14:04) The Parenting Membership was the only hope for Adriana and Tim.(18:07) The significant impact on our child when we step down from their level.(19:15) How Adrianna was able to meet the needs of both of her children at the same moment.(22:14) Bodie and Remy practicing the ways in which both of their needs can be fulfilled.(25:27) The result of Adriana and Tim's child's unmet demand for his father.(26:49) Tim’s experience in learning different methods of parenting and his perspective on whether dads should really do this job.(28:13) Adriana and Tim's positive outlook for the future.(31:21) How the membership and tools help Adrianna and Tim strengthen their marriage(32:47) Adrianna’s shift from not seeing her needs as valid to having the confidence in understanding what her needs are.

Recently someone posted a question in one of my communities: “Is it really so wrong to want my child to just LISTEN to me sometimes?  It seems like such a no-no in gentle parenting circles, and I’m worried that my child is growing up to be entitled and won’t know how to respect authority when they really HAVE to.” Parent Chrystal gave such a beautiful and eloquent response to this question that I asked her to come back on the show (her first visit was last year) to talk us through how she approaches getting her (three!  spirited!) children to listen to her…and what tools she uses instead.And this doesn’t end up creating entitled children who refuse to cooperate with any authority figure; in fact, her most spirited child was called a “conscientious and rule-abiding upstanding model student” by her teacher (which just about made Chrystal laugh out loud). Chrystal has been on this respectful parenting journey for a while now, but I learned during this interview that she first interacted with me in the Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop, where she started transforming a lot of the battles she was having with her children into a collaborative, cooperative relationship.   Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits If you want to make your own transformation from a relationship where your child JUST DOESN’T LISTEN to one where you have mutual care and respect for each other’s needs, then the Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop is for you. Go from constant struggles and nagging to a new sense of calm & collaboration. I will teach you how to set limits, but we'll also go waaaay beyond that to learn how to set fewer limits than you ever thought possible. Sign up now for the self-guided Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits for just $7. Click the banner to learn more.   Jump to highlights (02:37) Reasons we get triggered when our child isn’t listening to us. (03:38) An open invitation to join the Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop. (04:50) Chrystal's manifestation that her parenting is effective.(06:06) Saying NO to our child isn’t necessarily the right answer. (06:57) Challenges that Chrystal had as someone who was brought up in a religious family. (07:58) At a young age, Chrystal was responsible for the needs of her mother and siblings. (09:58) How resilience will play a big role in our children. (10:50) Impacts on our child for having a lot of control and compliance. (11:20) Chrystal’s transition from being controlled to having freedom and autonomy. (12:26) As a result of having a strong-willed children, Chrystal experiences a lot pushback and challenges. (15:08) When to set limits and boundaries to our children. (18:04) Ways to navigate our younger child when we need to take a pause in a situation. (19:07) The difference between setting limits and boundaries. (21:15) The importance of respectful parenting. (23:09) Using body cues instead of saying NO. (25:30) Introduction to Problem Solving Conversation: Nonjudgmental Observation (26:33) Finding solutions that is grounded in meeting our needs, and the needs of our children as well. (31:02) Our children's resistance creates a "US VS. THEM" scenario. (36:39) The unique needs of having multiple children. (37:47) The lessons that Chrystal learned from the book called Siblings Without Rivalry. (41:58) White presenting child plays a big role in changing the systems. (45:38) Chrystal’s children showing their amazing empathy and respect for one another.

“On average, authoritative parents spanked just as much as the average of all other parents.  Undoubtedly, some parents can be authoritative without using spanking but we have no evidence that all or even most parents can achieve authoritative parenting without an occasional spank.” I was fascinated by this statement, since authoritative parenting is the best style.  We know it’s the best, right? I mean, everyone says it is.  Including me.And who was the co-author on this paper this statement comes from?  None other than Dr. Diana Baumrind, creator of the Parenting Styles (although they weren’t called that then; they were originally called the Models of Parental Control.  Just to make sure we’re on the same page here, I’m going to say that again: Dr. Diana Baumrind, who created the parenting styles/model of parental control, says you can’t achieve the parenting style that has the ‘best’ outcomes for children without an occasional spank. So in this episode we dig pretty deeply into what makes up the parenting styles, and what Dr. Baumrind and others found about the effectiveness of these styles, and what impacts they had on children.  (And I have to warn you now, the samples sizes we’re looking at to ‘prove’ that authoritative is the best parenting style are going to make your stomach churn.)   Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits If you want to make your own transformation from a relationship where your child JUST DOESN’T LISTEN to one where you have mutual care and respect for each other’s needs, then the Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop is for you. Go from constant struggles and nagging to a new sense of calm & collaboration. I will teach you how to set limits, but we'll also go waaaay beyond that to learn how to set fewer limits than you ever thought possible. Sign up now for the self-guided Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits for just $7. Click the banner to learn more.       Jump to Highlights 01:33 Introduction to today’s topic 04:05 Influential figures like Dr. Larzelere and Dr. Baumrind supported spanking within authoritative parenting. 16:19 Traditional parenting expects child compliance, emphasizing authority over autonomy, and conformity over individuality. 28:30 Dr. Baumrind's parenting styles theory categorizes parenting into two extremes, neglecting the middle ground of "harmonious parenting." 38:30 Harmonious parenting emphasizes reasoning and mutual understanding while behavioral compliance can create mixed messages about control and values, reflecting broader societal power dynamics. 46:19 Parenting styles must adapt to cultural diversity and consider alternative parenting goals, emphasizing mutual understanding and meeting children's needs. 49:46 Understanding and meeting the needs of children and parents can eliminate the need for punishment.   [accordion]   [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"]   Jen Lumanlan  00:02   Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so,   Jenny  00:09   Do you get tired of hearing the same old intros to podcast episodes? I don't really, but Jen thinks you might. I'm Jenny, a listener from Los Angeles. Testing out a new way for listeners to record the introductions to podcast episodes. There's no other resource out there quite like Your Parenting Mojo, which doesn't just tell you about the latest scientific research on parenting and child development but puts it in context for you as well. So, you can decide whether and how to use this new information. I listen because parenting can be scary and it's reassuring to know what the experts think. If you'd like to get new episodes in your inbox, along with a free infographic on 13 Reasons Your Child Isn't Listening To You and what to do about each one. Sign up at YourParentingMojo.com/subscribe. You can also join the free Facebook group to continue the conversation. Over time, you might get sick of hearing me read this intro, so come and record one yourself. You can read from a script Jen provided or have some real fun with it and write your own. Just go to YourParentingMojo.com/recordtheintro. I can't wait to hear yours.   Jen Lumanlan  01:33   Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Before we get started, I wanted to mention that I'm reopening my Setting, Loving, and Effective Limits Workshop today. So, if you struggle to set limits on your child's behavior or if you set limits and your child disregards them, I'd encourage you to hop on in and sign up for the workshop because it's completely free. And for the first time, we have two ways to take it. You can do the Guided Path, where we walk you through it step-by-step starting in a few weeks, or you can do the Flex Path option, where you can get all the content as fast as you can complete the work if you just need the information now. So, to find out more about the totally free Setting, Loving, and Effective Limits Workshop and to sign up, go to YourParentingMojo.com/settinglimits. So today, we're going to talk about a topic I have been absolutely itching to dive into for months now, ever since I researched the episode on spanking with Dr. Andrew Grogan-Kaylor. So, you might well be familiar with the four parenting styles that were developed by Dr. Diana Baumrind, and you can imagine them on a two-by-two grid with the amount of parental control along the X axis, and the amount of parental warmth and responsiveness on the Y axis, so down in the lower left corner with Low Control and Low Warmth is Uninvolved Parenting, where parents don't ask a lot and they also don't give the child a lot either. In the upper left is Low Control but High Warmth, which Dr. Baumrind called Permissive Parenting. The lower right corner of High Control and Low Warmth is where we often find ourselves, sometimes even when we don't mean to be, which is “Authoritarian Parenting,” and I will add that setting limits puts us there pretty often. And in the upper right corner of High Control and also High Warmth is the supposed Holy Grail of Parenting, the “Authoritative Parenting Style,” and I do wish those names were more different, because I get them confused all the time and I'm going to try not to do that in this episode. Dr. Nancy Darling says that, "A parenting style is a constellation of attitudes toward the child that are communicated to the child, and create an emotional climate in which the parents' behaviors are expressed. Parenting style is expressed through parenting practices," although Dr. Baumrind's work really focuses mostly on the styles and doesn't talk so much about how these translate into things, parents actually do the practices so her parenting styles are pretty much-considered gospel in the parenting world. I've seen them cited everywhere, from popular books to her reviewed research, and never with any criticism It's just these are the parenting styles, and authoritative is the best one. And I will fully admit that I have done that too.   Jen Lumanlan  04:05   But while I was researching that episode on spanking, I came across a little nugget of a comment in a paper, and the comment was that, “On average, authoritative parents spank just as much as the average of all other parents. Undoubtedly, some parents can be authoritative without using spanking, but we have no evidence that all or even most parents can achieve authoritative parenting without an occasional spank.” And who are the authors of this paper? None other than Dr. Robert Larzelere, who has defended spanking far and wide for years with the co-author of Dr. Diana Baumrind of The Parenting Styles, so what the person who created these parenting styles is saying that the very best parenting style that results in the very best outcomes for children has ‘spanking’ as an integral component. Yes, you might be able to achieve this best parenting style without spanking, but goodness knows we severely doubt it. You really have to read the rest of the paper to believe it. If you want to find it, it's linked in the references and it's called Our Spanking Injunction Scientifically Supported, the author set out to show that spanking and junctions are not scientifically supported largely because both spanking and timeouts are shown to modify a child's behavior effectively. You might recall from the episode on Spanking that we discussed how a quirk in timing means is actually research by Dr. Mark Roberts at Idaho State University showing a cause-and-effect relationship between spanking and children's improved behavior that supports the use of spanking. This kind of research used to be allowed by university ethics committees and that study got in under the wire, and then the ethics committees started prohibiting research that involves beating children, so there can never be any research disproving this causal relationship. But the real kicker here is that the reason that Dr. Larzelere and Dr. Baumrind say ‘we should keep spanking’ is that parents benefit from having disciplinary options. They say that timeout is effective when it's practiced in the lab in a four-foot by five-foot empty room with a four-foot-high plywood barrier, as was used in Dr. Roberts's clinic and we just don't know if timeout is as effective as spanking in any other setting, so if families don't happen to have an isolation room with a four-foot-high plywood barrier, then they should spank their children if they need to because no other disciplinary method has been shown to be as effective. They go on to justify Dr. Roberts's use of a mean of 8.6 spankings before the child stays in timeout in one study, which they say, "Shows the difficulty of getting cooperation with timeout from clinically defiant young children who have learned to undermine all parental control attempts." These authors want to teach parents "how to punish more effectively," which means spanking their children if the child won't stay in timeout so the child will stay in timeout and the parent won't need to "escalate the severity of their verbal or physical punishment.” Of course, as soon as I learned this, I wanted to dig into these parenting styles and find out whether they are really something that should still be bandied about without questioning them.   Jen Lumanlan  07:02   The first thing I learned was that Dr. Baumrind actually never referred to them as parenting styles. In an early paper from 1966, back when there were only Permissive, Authoritarian, and Authoritative Styles and Neglectful hadn't been added yet, she referred to them as “Three Models of Parental Control.” She went on to say the effects of punitiveness, which is punishment that is severe, unjust, ill-timed, and administered by an unloving parent, is probably harmful, as well as ineffective, but these "should not be confused with the effects on the child of particular forms of mild punishment, physical or otherwise." So, not only does mild punishment not have negative effects, but it may have beneficial side effects, and she described these in academic language, so I'm going to translate them, and there are five beneficial side effects, and these are: firstly, after the "Emotional Release of Punishment," which we have to assume is mostly only happening for the parent, both parent and child may be able to return to being affectionate with each other more quickly than they would if the child hadn't been punished. Number two, “Any siblings who watch the misbehaving child getting punished are less likely to misbehave in that way themselves.” Number three, and I think this one might be my favorite, is “The child will copy the aggressive parent, which will result in positive assertive behavior with other people.” Number four, “The child won't feel as much guilt because they misbehaved.” And number five, “The child will be able to endure punishment to achieve a goal.” I almost couldn't believe my eyes when I read this list, so a child misbehaves and because the parent needs to release their frustration about what the child did, the parent should spank the child so they can go back to being affectionate again more quickly. I find it hard to believe the experience of a release of frustration through being hit but then makes them quickly feel affectionate again more quickly than they would have if they hadn't been hit. I'm willing to believe that siblings watching the punishment are less likely to do the thing the punished child did, except if that activity really meets one of their needs, and they decide the value of meeting that need outweighs the negative of punishment. On the copying of the aggressive parent, pretty much every parent I worked with who has more than one child at some point, posts in our community about their wit's end with their children fighting with each other, and what we typically see is when the parent hits the child, the child hits other people more, if they're a really assertive child, then they might hit the parent, although usually, this power flows downhill. And I'm reminded of a cartoon I saw recently with four frames in it. In the first, a man is getting yelled at by his boss and then he goes home and yells at his wife, and the wife yells at the children, and the children torment the family hat. So children know that power shouldn't flow uphill in a traditional hierarchical family, so they displace it to their other siblings or to the pet who can't fight back. Honestly, the only "benefit" I see if there's positive assertive behavior with others is it promotes White supremacy, this is parenting advice geared towards White parents who are preparing their children to take up their rightful role at the head of society, so they need to learn the people in power should be assertive and should punish those below them who step out of line. Jen Lumanlan  10:06 So that's what I read about Dr. Baumrind's stance on punishment that peak my interest because I had no idea that the person who developed the parenting style that everyone, including myself, accepts pretty much unquestionably as the superior one was not just developed by someone who believes spanking is good for children, but has said that while some authoritative parents may be able to achieve this best method without spanking, the vast majority will not. Spanking children is thus central to achieving the so-called best parenting style, something I had never realized in all of the years I've spent researching child development. So, of course, as soon as I read this, I wanted to dive deeper, so, Dr. Baumrind has only written three books as far as I can tell. One of these was on research methodology and other I couldn't find anywhere, but the third is called child maltreatment and optimal caregiving and social context, which is a longish position paper commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences, Study Panel on Child Abuse and Neglect with a goal of "applying what we know about normative family functioning to the circumstances of abusive and neglectful families". The book contains a summary of the parenting styles and how these apply to different populations and I'll just briefly address that different populations piece, so Dr. Baumrind actually comes right out and says something that I've gathered to be true from the research I've read over the many years, which is that "by studying healthy, affluent, middle-class samples, thus eliminating the pre potent effects of prejudice, poverty and chronic illness on children, the influence of variations in normal child-rearing styles on child outcomes can be identified.” And what she's saying here is that when we study middle-class White children who don't face a lot of stressors, we'll know how children should optimally develop, and then if we can just get everybody else to raise their children that way, then all children will grow up to have the advantages that middle class White children have. And this assumes, of course, that the way middle class White children develop right now is optimal, and as many of the parents I work with are middle class White parents, and I'm one too, I think it's safe to say that middle-class White parenting has left it scars on us, so to hold it up as the paragon of how to parent is a bit mistaken in my view. So now let's take a look at what makes up these parenting styles, Dr. Baumrind says that "data obtained from normal families usually focus on facets of responsiveness, meaning warmth, reciprocity, and attachment and demandingness, meaning firm control, monitoring positive and negative reinforcement,” and then she cites both early and current studies in support of this idea so let's look at each both responsiveness and demandingness individually. Jen Lumanlan  12:38 Dr. Baumrind says that "warmth refers to the parents’ emotional expression of love that motivates high investment parenting and brings about cohesive family relationships". Babies anticipate how their caregiver is likely to respond to their behavior, and they try to get the caregiver to adjust their plans to take the baby's needs into account, which the caregiver is often willing to do if they have empathy with and experience warmth toward the baby. This give and take based on willing compliance is characteristic of authoritative families and is based on mutual good feelings, rather than a tip for that exchange. There's also some discussion of the links between warmth and attachment and it seems as though attachment sits within the concept of warmth, although there hasn't been much actual research to connect these two ideas. Dr. Baumrind specifically notes though, that "effective warmth does not imply unconditional acceptance. A warm and loving parent may also be affirmed, disciplinarian.” Based on her research findings that unconditional approval was not associated with competence in preschool children, and that passive acceptance and overprotective parental practices were associated with dependence, and also other indecisive of low competence. So, what she's saying here is specifically the unconditional acceptance of the child is not required to use this best style of parenting - the authoritative style, and in fact, the real danger here is being so accepting that we make our child dependent on us and incompetent in other ways as well. Let's leave that little gem there for a bit while we go and look at demandingness. "Demanding parents directly confront rather than attempt to subtly manipulate their children and thus, may invite open conflict with their children at points of disagreement. They supervise and monitor their children's activities and have high aspirations for them.” So demandingness is supposed to be better than the alternative of coercion because demandingness tries to focus the child's attention on the act that needs to be corrected instead of on the parent’s power, Dr. Baumrind thinks that a child who is coerced will be annoyed and so will disobey when the coercive parent isn't there. Confrontation is a central component of demandingness and is associated with pro-social behavior as long as parents are supportive, non-punitive, authentic, meaning they don't try to disguise, inconsiderate, and demeaning remarks to children as friendly confrontation, and sensitive meaning they take into account the extent to which a child is able to handle confrontation without being overstimulated, and normally resilient hearty child will be pleasantly stimulated were told by high emotional expressivity, whereas an introverted vulnerable child...

In her book Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, Toko-pa Turner talks about the disconnection we feel from others, as well as from our own selves, because of the experiences we’ve had in our childhood.  While Toko-pa’s childhood was traumatic by any definition, even those of us who didn’t experience severe trauma were told - either verbally or non-verbally: You’re not enough.  You’re not good enough.   Or even: You’re too much.And we shut off that part of us, whatever it was.  Our sense of joy, our creativity, our need for autonomy.  We set aside those needs so we could be accepted by our family, whose love we craved more than anything in the world.But that doesn’t mean we need to always live our lives in this way.  We can accept the pain and suffering we’ve experienced, and incorporate that into new, more whole ways of being in the world.  A big part of this is finding a new relationship with our needs - seeing them, understanding them, being willing to articulate them.  Being willing to ask for help in meeting our needs - from our children, our partners, and our communities.  Toko-pa points out that our culture teaches us that the giver is in the position of strength; they are rich and secure and don’t need anyone’s help.  The receiver is the weak, poor, needy one (the whole thing smacks of femininity, doesn’t it?).  So to be in the position of strength we give and give and give until we don’t have anything left.But we have needs too, and we deserve to have these met, and to invite others to help us meet them - and this episode helps us to get started.I want to remind you of a couple of upcoming opportunities if you see that your own needs are not being met right now.Setting Loving (& Effective!) LimitsIf you want to make your own transformation from a relationship where your child JUST DOESN’T LISTEN to one where you have mutual care and respect for each other’s needs, then the Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop is for you.Go from constant struggles and nagging to a new sense of calm & collaboration. I will teach you how to set limits, but we'll also go waaaay beyond that to learn how to set fewer limits than you ever thought possible. Sign up now for the self-guided Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits for just $7. Click the banner to learn more. Toko-Pa Turner's BookBelonging: Remembering Ourselves Home (Affiliate Link).Jump to highlights(02:18) We create separation because we worry that we won’t be acceptable to the world.(02:50) An open invitation to join the free Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits Workshop.(05:01) Toko-Pa’s quest for belonging leaves her hungry for her mother's love and recognition.(06:38) Our first experiences of not belonging come at the hands of our families(08:51) Due to the dogma we have lived, we learn to hide, dismiss, or separate our feelings that are not valued (12:03) The desire to teach our child a lesson comes from our own pain, resulting from our own trauma.(13:25) Women are raised with extensive cultural history programming that dictates how a proper lady should behave.(18:54) The Death Mother is an archetype that represents a mother who takes control of her children's narrative lives in order to overcome her own traumas.(24:12) Being a mother has no worth in our culture, because they live to serve their children.(26:50) We gain a sense of belonging when we can help others.(33:43) The fear and shame associated with being an imposition on others.(37:44) You burden people when you show that you are in pain and in need.(42:00) Being seen is a paradox. It's the thing that we want more than anything, but we fear it more than anything too.(48:22) The purpose of our dreams.(54:53) Belonging yourself to those who need you - both human and other-than-human.

I don’t know about you, but I spent a LOT of time thinking about my birth plan before Carys was born.  I mean, that thing went through multiple iterations as I read new books about the birth process and thought about what I wanted mine to be like.   And I got lucky; we didn’t stray too far from the plan (except that that whole ‘urge to push’ thing?  Well I never felt that.  It seemed like she was quite happy where she was.  Perhaps that explains why she enjoys being wrapped in fluffy blankets so much?)   So I put all this effort into what the Big Day would be like, and practically zero into what life would be like afterward.   I mean, we got the nursery ready without realizing that she wasn’t going to spend any time in it at all for the first three months.   And the whole visitors thing - well that didn’t even cross my mind.   I guess I just assumed that people would come and visit, because that’s what people do after you have a baby.   But most of the time I didn’t want visitors!   I spent a good chunk of the first 10 days in tears.   (In fact my husband and I had a mini-celebration at bedtime on the 10th day because it was the first time I hadn’t cried since she was born.)   Sometimes I was able to get dressed and greet people…other times I was curled up in bed crying while my husband did the entertaining.   The idea of saying “no visitors yet please” simply didn’t cross my mind.   That’s what we discuss in today’s episode with Renee Reina of The Mom Room.  She was lucky enough to have her Mom living close by when she had her baby, who became her gatekeeper - friends and family would check in with Renee’s Mom before coming over.   Renee was able to create the calm, peaceful environment at home that she wanted to bring baby into - and re-engage with the world on her own terms, when she was ready.   In this episode we talk about how to make those early days of motherhood work for you and your family - no matter what social conventions say are the right things to do.   Those first weeks at home may be the hardest you’ll ever experience If you’re expecting a baby or have one under the age of one, the Right From The Start course is here to help.  I run it with the amazing Hannah and Kelty of Upbringing, who bring a whole lot of expertise and training on respectful parenting, along with expertise on raising siblings and ‘spirited’ children, in addition to the scientific research on these topics that you expect from me.   In the course we’ll give you concrete strategies to: Get the essential sleep you (all) need Create a secure attachment & navigate big feelings Support gross motor development & independent play (freeing up time for you!) Prepare for and thrive with siblings And so much more!   Parents who have taken the course tell us that there’s nothing else like it available: this is the only course that helps you support baby’s development, while holding your needs as equally important, and helping you to meet these as well.   Click the image to learn more about Right From The Start.         [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"]   Jen Lumanlan  00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be   Jenny  00:09 so do you get tired of hearing the same old interest in podcast episodes? I don't really But Jen thinks you might. I'm Jenny, a listener from Los Angeles, testing out a new way for listeners to record the introductions to podcast episodes. There's no other resource out there quite like Your Parenting Mojo, which doesn't just tell you about the latest scientific research on parenting and child development, but puts it in context for you as well. So you can decide whether and how to use this new information. I listen because parenting can be scary and it's reassuring to know what the experts think. If you'd like to get new episodes in your inbox along with a free infographic on 13 reasons your child isn't listening to you and what to do about each one. Sign up at YourParentingMojo.com/subscribe. You can also join the free Facebook group to continue the conversation. Over time you might get sick of hearing me read this intro so come and record one yourself. You can read from a script gents provided or have some real fun with it and write your own. Just go to your parenting mojo.com forward slash record the intro. I can't wait to hear yours.   Jen Lumanlan  01:26 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today we're going to look at another topic that we can file under things I'd never given a moment's thought about before Carys was born, which is what those early days at home were going to be like. Looking back on it, I have really have no idea why my preparation for her birth literally stopped at her birth, and didn't give a moment's thought to what would happen even in the immediate days afterwards. And I have to say, I felt really lost. I cried every day for the first 10 days. And on day four, it was pretty much continual from start to finish. And thank goodness, my good friend, Michelle had told me there would be a lot of hormone rebalancing on that day, so I knew it was coming. Otherwise, I would have thought I was actually falling apart. Things did get a bit better over the following days. And on day 10, my husband and I had a little celebration at bedtime because it was the first day since she had been born that I didn't cry. If you're expecting a baby in the coming months, or if you have one under the age of one, then the right from the start course is designed to give you the information you need to go from just surviving each day to truly thriving. In this course that I run with Hannah and Kelty of upbringing you'll find information on topics like getting the sleep you both needed to function, making choices about feeding, supporting development, independent play, navigating the difficult sibling relationship if you already have an older child, and so much more. Whether you're brand new at this parenting thing, or if you have one or more children already, you know things have to be different his time around. The right from the start course will get you out of the midnight googling about all the things that might be wrong with your child and into a sense of calm and confidence that you've got this. You'll meet an amazing group of parents who are on this journey as well, figuring this stuff out alongside you. With support from Hannah and Kelty as well as me, you'll even be able to join group coaching calls to get all of your questions answered. Parents who have taken the course say firstly, they had no idea that they even needed these group coaching calls, but they really did. And secondly, there's no resource out there that considers them to be just as important as their baby in this relationship. And as we'll hear about from my guest today, all of the attention is on the mother when the baby's on the way, and as soon as the baby is here, the mother is relegated to the background. And their only role is to provide a suitable environment for the baby. And right from the start, we hold you to be just as important and valued person as your baby, and that your baby actually learns really important things when you hold this to be true. Enrollment for right from the start is open now until Wednesday, April 13. And sliding scale pricing is available. And so my guest today in our sharing Your Parenting Mojo episode is Renee Reina of the Mom Room. Welcome, Renee. It's so great to have you here.   Renee  04:24 Thank you for having me. Yeah.   Jen Lumanlan  04:26 So what was this transition from not being a parent to being a parent like for you?   Renee  04:31 It was a lot. So I had my son. He's three now. I had him when I was 34 years old. So I had been in grad school living by myself, focusing on myself, setting goals for myself, just focused on those two then having a baby, I took a 12 month maternity leave for my PhD program.   Jen Lumanlan  04:53 Because you're in Canada we should mention.   Renee  04:55 Yes, I am Canadian. I know people are always like "12 months?" So, you know, in the first 12 months, I would say things were good. Like, there were lots of things in early postpartum that blew my mind. And that is why I started the blog. I started talking about these things on social media. And then I found “Oh, like, I'm not the only one.” Everyone else thinks the same thing. In the first 12 months, I was very focused on it's just me, it's my son, and my husband was working full time. So I had that mindset going into the 12 month maternity leave that I didn't have anything else to worry about. So that was really nice. And I think something that I wish all moms could experience you know, and have that time to just be like focused on transitioning into motherhood and focusing on your children.   Jen Lumanlan  05:48 Yeah, it's a massive lack, isn't it? With no guarantee of paid leave in the US, if you're lucky enough to work for a big company that offers it, you might get it. I think it was three months when I did it. Many companies are now expanding to six months but many parents take three or four days off and then go back to work and they have to come in the bathrooms cafe or restaurant or something. I mean, it's just horrific.   Renee  06:09 In Canada now, we have the option to extend to 18 months and you If you can split the time with your partner, yeah. So like my husband's self-employed, he's a surgeon. So that's not an option for him. But if you work for a company where you have benefits and insurance, you can split the maternity leave or parental leave with your partner. So yeah, it breaks my heart to know that not everyone has that as an option.   Jen Lumanlan  06:33 Okay? And so what was birth like for you?   Renee  06:37 So I was induced at 38 weeks because Milo was growing fine and then he kind of plateaued. So the thinking was, “let's get him out in the real world, and you can feed him, and then he'll, you know, grow up outside of your uterus.” So I was induced at 38 weeks. And I have to say, the labor and delivery part was pretty good. Like, I don't really have any complaints. I had my husband there. My sister was with me. The scariest part for me was the epidural. To be honest, yeah.   Jen Lumanlan  07:12 And Did it meet your expectations? Was it the same kind of birth that people have on TV or?   Renee  07:17 No, not at all. So it's so funny, because that's something that I talk about because I think a lot of moms feel shame for not feeling this like overwhelming sensation of love and bond. This bond between their babies as soon as they give birth, and that was me, to be honest. When Milo was born, they put him on my chest, and I was literally just like, impartial, like, I was neutral. I was just like, "oh, okay, so this is the little person that was inside of me," like I had no connection. And it really took a while for me to build that connection. And now that he's three years old and he's developing a little personality, like, I find the older he got the more I fall in love with him. And you know, seeing him as his own little person, like it just grew. So it's something that not a lot of people talk about. And they feel shame, if they don't feel that at their birth. And I did not have a traumatic labor and delivery, as many people do. I think a lot of people have that expectation going into labor and delivery. And then when it's not there, they think there's something wrong with them. And the same goes for early postpartum. A lot of people have a low or depressed mood. Some people have postpartum depression. And so it's like this conflicting society is telling you that you should be the happiest you've ever been. And this is the best time of your life. But you don't feel that. And if society is saying that, and that's what everyone else is showing on social media and on TV and, you know, in movies, are you really going to speak up about not being the happiest you've ever been? Because, you know, you're afraid of being judged. And people thinking that? “Oh, she must not like being a mom,” or, you know, “she's not fit to be a mom.” So yeah, it's a problem. And this is why I speak out about things like this, because every time I do, the response is overwhelming with people who are like, "Wow, me too." And, you know, I just love that people can see my content, read all the comments and be like, "Oh, my God, this is such a common thing."   Jen Lumanlan  09:30 Yeah, and you brought me back to the moment when Carys was put on my chest as well. And we have the very first picture of her that was taken. It was her on my chest. And my eyes are screwed up because I'm crying. And the thought that's in my mind is, well, I don't hate you. Because I had a difficult relationship with my mom, I was fully prepared to not love her coming out. And I was fortunate as well, and had a relatively medically easy birth, and had absolutely no idea how I was going to feel, and so to have it be neutral was a win for me. That was a real win. And then yeah, absolutely. Those first 10 days, I was so lucky. Actually, a Canadian friend told me about the day four hormone shifts. And I didn't stop crying the entire day. And if she hadn't told me that, I mean, where is my doctor on this? Where is all of the support we're supposed to have to help us understand what's coming? If she hadn't told me that, I would have thought there is something deeply wrong with me because I cannot stop crying, and I think on day 10, my husband and I had a little celebration at the end of the day because I hadn't cried for the first time.   Renee  10:26 And to speak about the crying, which I don't know why this like, left my memory for the first week, every day at 7pm. I would just cry uncontrollably.   Jen Lumanlan  10:39 Oh, wow.   Renee  10:40 And I remember thinking, you know, I kept going to these doctor's appointments so that they could measure Milo's head and stuff. And I was like, what about me? Like, I just gave birth, and I can't even sit in the doctor's waiting room. I can't sit down because I'm in pain, but I'm going to bring my baby there. And everyone's gonna, like, you know, “oh, like a baby.” And then they're going to measure his head, and check his testicles, and whatever. And I'm just sitting there like, okay, and I remember my doctor happened to be a young mother herself. She had young kids, and she looked at me in the appointment, and she said, "How are you doing?" And she had a resident with her, and I just broke down crying. Like if she hadn't just taken the time to be like, "How are you doing?" And looking at me in my eyes. I probably wouldn't have said anything. Yeah, And you know, I am very self-aware and understand, you know, feelings of anxiety and things like that. So I can imagine what most people go through and are not able to verbalize to their partners, family, or friends when they're going through a difficult time. And I remember her saying, you know, it's really common for the first couple of weeks when the sun goes down for women to start crying, because it's like, scary. You know, your support person has left for the day. You are kind of like relaxing the baby sleeping hoepfully. Now you have time to kind of like, let everything out. It was so interesting. And luckily for me, it ended up going away after the week. But yeah, I'll never forget every 7pm jeopardy would start and I'm just crying.   Jen Lumanlan  12:25 And it wasn't because the questions were so bad.   Renee  12:28 Oh, yeah.   Jen Lumanlan  12:30 Yeah, it reminds me actually of a study I read. And I'm not going to be able to quote this precisely. And it was old, which you'll understand why this is important in a second, but it said something along the lines of was "the biggest predictor of whether doctors,” and of course, it means male doctors, “would provide appropriate care to mothers after a birth was whether or not their wife had a baby."   Renee  12:50 Interesting     Jen Lumanlan  12:51 It had nothing to do with their training. It was whether their wife, and of course, assuming a cisgender heterosexual partnership had a baby. And so that I think that just speaks to the complete inadequacy of preparation that doctors get in terms of seeing as a complete set as a unit. And that it's not just all about the baby. But we're important to in those early days when everybody wants to come and see the baby. That was another challenging period for me. What was that like for you? How did you navigate that?   Renee  13:20 This is my favorite topic to talk about. And it always blows up on TikTok when I talk about this topic. So when I was pregnant, in the days leading up to labor and delivery, I suddenly had this feeling like I didn't really want people at the hospital for sure. So I think it was like my mom and my dad came and visited Milo quickly and then, and my sister was there because she was in the delivery room. Then I went home. My mom was always around. She lived down the street at that time, which was amazing. And my mom was like my chosen support person. I wanted my mom there in my head. I had Milo on a Friday. My husband was back at work on Monday. So my mom was always there, you know, helping with everything. And so, she was kind of like my gatekeeper. Because she would be like, "Do you want people to come over?" I had Milo in my hometown. So all my family was there and people wanted to come visit. And I was like, "No, I don't want anybody in the house." I was lucky that my mom was kind of the gatekeeper, like having to answer to people. So I didn't have people texting me. I didn't have to say like, "Oh, I'm not really feeling up to it or like make excuses." She was the one that was staying in contact with everyone. So this lasted for probably a few weeks. You know, every once in a while my mom would check in and I was like, "Nope, I don't want anybody coming." It's really interesting because a few weeks after I gave birth, we had a family function. Someone had passed away, and so I went to the function, and I remember my uncle coming up to me and saying, "Oh, I guess you're really having a hard time." And I said, "What? Why are you saying that?" And he's like, "Oh, just because, you know, you didn't want people over and stuff." And I was like, "Well, isn't this interesting?" You know, because I just gave birth, I don't want people coming in and visiting. And I just want to be alone and focus on Milo, get into a routine to heal physically. People are...

We've already covered a couple of episodes on sleep, including the cultural issues associated with sleep, then more recently we talked with Dr. Chris Winter about his book The Rested Child where we looked at sleep issues in older children.   But if you have a young child who isn't sleeping well, from the baby stage all the way up to about preschool, this episode is for you!  My guest is Macall Gordon, senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Antioch University Seattle, and who has studied young children's sleep for 20 years.  She's particularly interested in the intersection between children's temperament and their sleep, and how parents of the children she calls 'little livewires' can support these children so everyone gets more sleep.   If you have questions about sleep training - particularly when and how to do it - this episode is for you!   And if you're expecting a baby or have one under the age of one (whether this is your first or not!) you might be interested in the Right From The Start course, which is designed to help you get things right for you from the start.  We go in-depth on understanding topics like sleep, feeding, physical, mental, and emotional development, and more - both for baby and for you!   Get all the (research-backed, of course) information you need, plus a supportive community and four group coaching calls during the 8-week course.  Click the banner below to learn more!       [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan  00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so   Jenny  00:09 Do you get tired of hearing the same old interest in podcast episodes? I don't really but Jen thinks you might. I'm Jenny, a listener from Los Angeles, testing out a new way for listeners to record the introductions to podcast episodes. There's no other resource out there quite like Your Parenting Mojo, which doesn't just tell you about the latest scientific research on parenting and child development but puts it in context for you as well. So you can decide whether and how to use this new information. I listen because parenting can be scary and it's reassuring to know what the experts think. If you'd like to get new episodes in your inbox, along with a free infographic on 13 reasons your child isn't listening to you and what to do about each one. Sign up at YourParentingMojo.com/subscribe. You can also join the free Facebook group to continue the conversation. Over time you might get sick of hearing me read this intro so come and record one yourself. You can read from a script Jen provided or have some real fun with it and write your own. Just go to YourParentingMojo.com/recordtheintro. I can't wait to hear yours.   Jen Lumanlan  01:26 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today we are going to be talking about a topic that we have addressed a number of times recently. We're coming back for another go at it from a different angle. We're looking at sleep and specifically this time we're looking at sleep training. Before we do that, I wanted to let you know that I am reopening the course that I ran with Hannah and Kelty from Upbringing in a few weeks and it's called right from the start. And it's really about how to get parenting right for you from the start, rather than that, there is one right way to parent. And so we cover all the essential topics that are really relevant to parenting in baby's first year, from sleeping to feeding to supporting physical, mental and emotional development. But the parents who have taken the course tell us that the part that they really needed that they didn't know they needed was the part that really speaks about "What is my experience as a parent? What are my needs as a parent? And how do I get those met along with meeting my baby's needs as well?" So, the course is designed for both first-time parents as well as those who have a child already and who know that parenting cannot be the same with this child as it has been with previous children because we don't have enough hands to go around. There isn't enough of us to give this child the same experiences our previous children have had. So enrollment for right from the start is open between April 3rd and 13th  and we all start together as a group on Monday, April 18. So, gift certificates are also available, so if a new baby is not in your present or in your future, then you may find that it makes a great gift for somebody if you're going to a shower or potentially an even an early Mother's Day gift for somebody who's important in your life. So if you would like to help somebody in your life to get the right start for them with their baby, then I invite you to go to YourParentingMojo.com/rightfromthestart to learn more. Today I’m here with Macall Gordon, who is the senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Antioch University Seattle. And she has been interested in the topic of baby sleep for over 20 years now. And it's a topic that took her back to graduate school in 2001. She's a certified gentle sleep coach at her company, Little Live Wires, as well. And Macall may actually, in addition to obviously being on the same page sartorially with me (we're both here in our navy blue shorts) she may be the best-prepared guest I've ever had on the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. She actually reached out to me and said, "Could I be on the show?" And I said, "Well, I've done a couple of episodes on sleep already. What new angle do you think we could take on this?" and she responded with a long list of topics that really get into the weeds on the research. So if you are the parent of a child who isn't sleeping well and particularly if that child is under a year of age, then do listen up, because today we're going to spend quite a bit of time talking about sleep training, and we'll learn what we know from the research as well as where that research base really lets us down, and what all of that means for struggling parents, particularly parents who have what researchers call a “Difficult Temperament,” but I imagined Macall might call a Little Livewire. So welcome, Macall. It's great to have you here.   Macall  04:16 Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.   Jen Lumanlan  04:18 All right. And so you have been at this for a while now. This is a long time to be interested in baby's sleep. What was it that really drew you to this topic?   Macall  04:28 That's such a good question. I started on this journey back with my first child that I had right at the very start of the internet so it was so early that all the websites that were on the web could fit in a book. It was actually a telephone directory of the internet, so we relied very heavily on books and then all these parenting magazines that you'd see in the pediatricians' offices and the magazines I was noticing that this was the era of critical periods of brain development, right? It's a big deal about the first three years, so important for brain development. And so, they were talking about the importance of responsiveness for brain development and attachment, and everything. And then, literally on the next page, they were saying, but for sleep, you gotta let your baby cry it out. And what I noticed was that the age to start was getting younger and younger. When I first started looking at was six months, and then it was five months, and then it was four months, and I thought, "Boy, this just doesn't totally make sense to me." There must be research to show that this is safe and a good idea. And back then I didn't really have a lot of resources to dig into the research but as the Internet became more and more available, I started poking around. And once I figured out, first of all, what researchers called "crying it out," which was a whole project by itself, once I kind of unlocked the research base, honestly, the more I looked, the less I found. And I kept thinking, "Okay, I'm just not finding it." It's out there. I just haven't found it yet. And even when I went to my very first conference to present my lit review, I was standing there quaking in my boots because I thought there's going to be some massive researcher who's going to come along and just look at me and shake their head and pity, and say, "Oh, honey, didn't you know about the whatever study?" That I had missed some huge piece, but really, what I found is that there wasn't a lot there, and in the ensuing 10 or 15 years, still not much more on this particular question, so many levels we're still in the same boat as we were even 20 years ago.   Jen Lumanlan  06:44 Yeah, and on that issue of the age at which to start sleep training. When I looked at one of your conference posters, and it has the bars showing the age at which the resource or the book or the study recommends sleep training, and the vast majority of them, they're doing a study on children who are aged between six months on the very young end, but usually around 12 months, and like 50 months, right? parents in the real world. Yes, there are a small fraction whose children are not sleeping through the night by then and they need help, but who are most of the parents who are searching for information on sleep training?   Macall  07:19 Right. They are parents of young babies. Yes, that's perhaps one of the most startling findings to me was that the research that we often use to support the need and effectiveness of sleep training in young infants was not even done on infants, but we know very little about how any infants in those studies experienced the intervention for being, you know, so big on precision, sometimes research really misses the boat on development so I think you probably saw, there's one study that had the sample was 4 to 52 months. If you do that math, 52 months is a four-and-a-half-year-old. You can't possibly tell me that a four-and-a-half-year-old experienced that intervention the same way a four-month-old baby did. But the results of that study didn't even parcel things out by age at all. They just reported it for the sample. That's what I knew when we started poking at it and saying, "Okay, what do we really know, in a nuanced, developmentally aware way about sleep training?" It really is a bit of the emperor's new clothes, right? I've consistently gone, why is no one else seeing this? No one else is seeing what I'm seeing here.   Jen Lumanlan  08:32 And so I think that's super important to understand for this topic and for other topics as well. I mean, this is not uncommon in the literature, right? To study a sample that is convenient to you. Maybe those were the babies that the researcher had easy access to, for whatever reason, and they didn't know how to go about analyzing the data, or it wasn't convenient for them to analyze the data in multiple cohorts, maybe there was only one four-month-old and all the rest of us are much older, and they would have had to throw that one child out and then report a much older dataset, and they didn't want to do that. These concerns exist throughout the literature and it's a pervasive problem. What other kinds of disconnects did you find as you're digging into this research?   Macall  09:08 Oh, goodness, well, what we're really talking about is the difference between how researchers characterize effectiveness and then what happens to those findings when they're reported in the real world and the problem is that the findings from research have been expanded to such a level that when you really start looking for nuanced, developmentally appropriate information, it's just not there, so, for example, that study the four to 52 months, some of these don't even say how many infants were in the sample, and then they just say "extinction," which is really what we're talking about here. Extinction is the main focus of, I would say, 99% of the research on sleep interventions. Extinction is basically the idea that whatever you don't pay attention to will go away. The old behavior modification behaviorist idea that what you pay attention to persists and what you ignore goes away, so essentially, crying it out, there are at least a couple of forms of crying it out extinction. There's pure extinction, which has been researched, which is you just close the door and you don't go back until morning, some people call that cold turkey and there are books who recommend doing that. The second one is the graduated extinction, which we think of as Ferber, so you leave for progressively longer periods of time. There are some variations of that, were ones called like time checks, where you go in at regular intervals. Then there's this funny one called "camping out," which is a little bit blurry because it can mean what they call "extinction with parental presence," meaning you do pure extinction but you stay in the room, so the parent stays there and pretends they're asleep, while the baby or child is freaking out. It can also mean what we refer to as parental fading, which means that you start giving a lot of support at first and then you fade that out. Those two things are lumped together under the same title, which I don't personally fully understand so that one's a little bit unclear, but for sure, pure and graduated extinction are the big ones, and because they're the big ones, we have to think about the business of research, right? because it's an industry. It's business. What happens with research is that once there's a finding and people start building on or replicating those findings, it becomes a thing, right? That you just keep, you know, not really regurgitating, but definitely recycling, adding, reciting, and suddenly it becomes a mountain and then A it becomes evidence-based and B no one wants to question it, right? It's really becomes like this juggernaut that no one can sail because there's this mountain of evidence but there's also a mountain of evidence because people keep asking that same question, right? There's a reason there's a mountain of evidence. It's not because it's the best, it's just because most people are researching it because they want to build on an existing body of literature, so that's definitely where we're at right now. I continue to be surprised at the number of studies that just ask and answer, "Does extinction work? Does it work?" We need to start asking other questions like, "Who does it work for?" Who does it not work for? At what age is it maybe not recommended? How much crying is too much? At what ages? " So more of a dose-response, rather than just this global, it works for everyone at all times, in all situations, across all amounts of crime. I really think we need to really start deconstructing it, really taking it apart and looking at each piece more carefully, which is kind of the focus of my work, I would say.   Jen Lumanlan  13:01 I'm 100% agree. And just on that sort of mountains of evidence point, I mean, I see that over and over and over again, where whatever study I'm looking at, it was just released, cites a study from a couple of years before, and what they're citing is not necessarily the findings of that study, but just a comment that the person in that study who was doing that study made, which was then citing a previous study, which was about a comment that person in that study may not their actual results. And so you build on this series of comments that people have made that aren't actually even related to their results, and then you get finally back to the beginning of the evidence chain and you'll find that what was described in the original research is nothing like what you ended up, it's like that game of whispers, right, where you're whispering one to the next, and it gets changed throughout the way that it's cited, and it's built on as if at each stage, it still represents the truth, right?   Macall  13:52 There's some new work now called I just dipped my toe into it, but it's about what's called citation networks. It's very much this. It's about how people citing and reciting certain pieces of evidence builds a kind of belief system that then gets sort of entrenched, right? And then you have review articles that summarize the things that people have already said again and again, and then meta-analyses that re-review, and then you have levels of evidence, right? We have this chambliss criteria of evidence-based practices, and you start really looking at it, and then I, of course, compare it to what the books are saying, because then this information gets funneled into more popular consumable information, then I do a comparison of like, well, the book said this, what is the research say? It is like whispers, right? It is like, I think we call it "rumors" or something, yeah, where things get altered in the translation, so, that's very much true. I always have to do a disclaimer that this work is not about slamming extinction as an intervention. It's not at all. It definitely works for some families and lots of babies and lots of children. It totally works without a lot of stress and drama. However, it does not work for everyone and I don't think parents get that message really. As far as parents are concerned, this is literally the only option and that is very much not true, so it's more a call for the idea that we need to know more about the ins and outs of using extinction and what the alternatives are because they're out there. They just don't get depressed. And also, it's gotten so polarized to pro and anti-crying it out and I really think that's leaving out a lot of struggling people in the middle, so this is also a call. And also, the people on either side of that debate, whatever they are lobbying for worked for them, then I say, there's all these people in the middle for whom neither option worked, right? And they are really struggling and so I think that by giving parents options, we can defuse some of the sleep war piece and we can give struggling parents a little bit better information, I think.   Jen Lumanlan  16:11 I totally agree. Okay, so another thing that I want to be really clear about is that when we're talking about doing a study on a method of supporting children's sleep, the way the researchers are doing that study is very different from the way a parent at home, who is struggling and right in the thick of this and has a sleepless baby in one hand and their sleep book in the other hand, and these are two very different experiences, right? Can you talk a little bit more about what it's like to be a parent in a sleep training study?   Macall  16:40 Oh, boy, that's such a big, great question. In research, we call that transportability, right. Does what we find in the lab translate into real-world experience? In studies, they rarely just hand the parent a pamphlet or a book and say, "Let us know how that goes." Almost all the time, someone meets with the family and then does a whole intake history. Often, they craft a plan with that family and then there is a follow-up for questions even if that follow-up is just a research assistant asking questions, we would consider that interest and a form of support. So the context of a research study almost mirrors a coaching context, so what we do as sleep coaches, and sometimes I honestly think that the active ingredient is sleep coaching, is not necessarily what we're telling parents to do. It's the support we're giving them and the validation. In research, they zero

The band The Alphabet Rockers consists of lead members Kaitlin McGaw and Tommy Shepherd, and a multi-racial group of children who are also involved in writing and performing.  They write about their real lived experiences and their desire to live in a world where everyone belongs. Kaitlin and Tommy are actually fellows at the Othering and Belonging Institute, run by Dr. jon powell, whose work I really respect and whom we interviewed in the episode on othering. They also do work in schools - in an hour-long program they work with a class to compose a song, which gives children the experience not just of songwriting, but of truly being heard and having their ideas respected. Kaitlin and Tommy have now written a children's book called You Are Not Alone, which we discussed in the episode - along with a host of other juicy topics related to parenting...and racism...and White supremacy... [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan  00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so   Jenny  00:10 do you get tired of hearing the same old interests to podcast episodes? I don't really But Jen thinks you might. I'm Jenny, a listener from Los Angeles, testing out a new way for listeners to record the introductions to podcast episodes. There's no other resource out there quite like Your Parenting Mojo, which doesn't just tell you about the latest scientific research on parenting and child development but puts it in context for you as well, so you can decide whether and how to use this new information. I listen because parenting can be scary and it's reassuring to know what the experts think. If you'd like to get new episodes in your inbox, along with a free infographic on 13 reasons your child isn't listening to you and what to do about each one. Sign up at YourParentingMojo.com/subscribe. You can also join the free Facebook group to continue the conversation. Over time you might get sick of hearing me read this intro so come and record one yourself. You can read from a script Jen provided or have some real fun with it and write your own. Just go to YourParentingMojo.com/RecordTheIntro. I can't wait to hear yours   Jen Lumanlan  01:33 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today we are going to do something I think that we've never done before. I don't believe we have had Grammy-nominated people on the show before so I'm excited for that. We are welcoming Tommy Shepherd and Caitlin McGraw who are co-creators of the Grammy nominated Alphabet Rockers and they have quickly become an important voice for today's youth curating content centered on children's voices and social justice issues like racism and gender inclusion. Their Grammy-nominated album “Rise Shine #Woke” inspired kids to stand up to hate and they have a second Grammy-nominated album “Love” which lifts up the voices of trans-two-spirit and gender nonconforming communities. They recently received a third Grammy nomination for “Shine” (melanin remix) featured on all one tribe, which is nominated for a best children's album. And now they've now written a picture book called You Are Not Alone, which empowers kids to love themselves and their identities stand up to hate, and have each other's backs no matter what. And the book looks at how children can feel others because of their race, gender, culture, and other factors and how they can navigate discrimination, and find strengths from their friends and allies. Welcome, Tommy and Kaitlin, so great to have you here.   Tommy  02:39 Thank you happy to be here.   Kaitlin 02:42 Let's go   Jen Lumanlan  02:41 All right, so I think the first thing that struck me when I was listening to your work is there are not so many intergenerational bands out there. How did you get started? And why did you choose music as your mechanism to get these ideas out into the world?   Kaitlin 02:55 Yeah, well, we had been working in the schools independently and when we came together with alphabet rockers initially, actually, it was, you know, kind of subversive, we knew that hip hop was a cultural space for belonging, actually, and for expression. And so we were bringing hip hop into the schools in a way that we felt really served all children and quickly realized that articulating and being very specific with the adults about what inclusion is required all framework, so we shifted our mission statement, and since 2015 we have been making music intentionally that makes change. So each song holds a question that our children pose to us that we see as community agents for change and we work in community to kind of find a musical response and heart-centered space to share.   Jen Lumanlan  03:48 And so we're here with the two of you today, but you are not the entirety of Alphabet Rockers, right? Yes, I should make that clear for folks who don't know you.   Tommy  03:55 Sure, yeah. We have a huge team who we are really about our collectivity, a lot of minds come together to conceptualize a lot of minds coming together to actually hold down the business part of things. We have a team that really is about keeping us on our toes with our affirmations and with our [unintelligible]. And we have team members that are also leading like Caitlin and I and other youngsters they lead you know, and leadership changes and leadership actually a thing that we really thrive on because we play follow the follower most of the time.   Jen Lumanlan  04:29 Yeah, and so when we're watching an Alphabet Rockets recording, one of the things that we see most of, is children right? It’s children singing and often singing about themselves and how they show up in the world. How does that all work?   Kaitlin 04:42 It's a great question for each song has their own journey. So some songs do hold private conversations we've had with kids and families. The song you are not alone, for example, was a private conversation with a transgendered boy who shared what inclusion would look like for him in school and he had written something on a wall. We do a lot of anonymous sharing as well, whether it be now virtually actually it works really well, kids can write their ideas into songs without us even knowing who wrote it. But at the time in person, he put it up and posted it on the wall and said, “I need friends that have my back note, even when I'm not in the room.” And it really, kind of like broke us open a little bit to look at what's the space we want to create for this child and with this child, because at that time, his family had done everything they could since he was a baby to, you know, kind of create the path forward together and they didn't have this piece, they didn't have the musical information that would say, “Okay, like, we know what the truth is in our hearts, we know what's right in our heads, and we don't have the spiritual connection, the culture to walk in where we can share with someone without articulating every piece of it.” And so that's kind of what we did is we wrote that story with him at the center and with his family at the center, and the song that came out of it was really about the world we want to live in. It may not exist yet, but we want to be in a world where your friends have your back, no matter what. It goes right into the book as well. It's like we just published a book by that name too, You're Not Alone, where it's like, “Oh, look, you know, they don't say my name correct at school but my friend always corrects people,” and we're looking for that, we're looking for that bravery from any age, not just.   Tommy  06:24 And the really interesting part about it is that the young people you've heard sing the songs are singing from their perspectives, but it's from that perspective that Kaitlin is speaking of, they identified with these stories, and with these interviews that we had, they identify, so it almost seems like they are coming from their own perspectives, you're gonna get some of that this year, some of them like coming from their own perspectives this year, however, they really just identified with not being alone with knowing that they're not alone in these feelings, all of them.   Jen Lumanlan  06:55 Yeah, and I was watching last night, one of the videos on your website about the work that you've done in classrooms, and was just struck by how intentional the whole exercise that you go through with children to work together with them for an hour. I mean, it's an hour. It's a short length of time and creating a song with them in that time, and that they come out of this understanding a bit more about the importance of being heard, and having that experience of having been heard. That's the secret sauce, right?   Kaitlin  07:26 Yeah, there's a lot of secret sauce happening, like some of that is just like, how are we still compadres business partners, like, 10 years still got stuff to process still in it like a quest, you know? And it's a question and we're still in it together. You know, that video of us writing with kids is actually from Mylan Elementary School, which is where we really started our whole initiative because, at the time, there wasn't brave space talking about anti-racism, and we were at the front of it in terms of the tools that we had. So when kids were writing their songs, and we really listened to what does bias feel like to you what is unfair to you? And sometimes what they talked about, you know, what you think would be like a hot topic, and sometimes it was. Sometimes they would talk about how it's not fair that people when they pollute in the ocean, it affects the world, there was a stretching for us of like, “Yeah, cause sometimes people will talk about changing the world is just about trash and animals, when we were really looking at our humanity. And so we wanted to make sure kids had a space where humanity was the why. It wasn't the convenience of things that adults felt kids could fix, which is like, let's recycle and pick up trash, it was like, “No,” but look at the space we hold together. And that all happened in that video you saw on our website.   Tommy  08:42 And the cool part about that process, too, is that we spent probably 90% on the journey of getting to a song and 10% of actually putting the song together and making it happen and practicing with them. That's kind of how we kind of do it, It's really about them getting there. And then we just put it together and it happens, you know,   Kaitlin  09:02 isn't that kind of how we write songs? I mean, it's like the process is the product.   Jen Lumanlan  09:08 Yeah, and I was thinking, you know, why music? why choose music to get this message out? And something that I read somewhere on your site, just made it click for me like anti-racist work is so often seen as something that happens up here and our heads, right? And you know, the whole White supremacist-based idea of anything that happens up in your head is valuable and important and good, and anything that happens in your body is sort of irrelevant at best. And you wrote about reconnecting those two, can you speak a little bit about how you use music to really connect thinking and knowing about anti-racist work?   Kaitlin  09:39 Yes. The biggest thing. And we keep coming back to it right because we feel like kids, they're actually, they're thinking here actually in their hearts first, and adults are jammed up. So when people say, “Oh, these topics are too big for kids,” it's like are they actually though because their hearts are so open, and so the weaving the music actually just creates an earworm of love of connection of validation of celebration, of advocacy, it just keeps going in and out.   Tommy  10:07 It's reminiscent of a cycle. Keeps feeding itself.   Kaitlin  10:11 When we first started doing the racial justice music in particular, there were a lot of people who were like, “Oh, don't do it, don't do it, you're gonna mess up, you're gonna make somebody feel alienated, you're gonna isolate people.” And you know, even trusted advisors were like, “You be careful because you have the risk of doing what White people have done with civil rights learning,” and just made it just feel yuck, you know, make somebody feel like they don't belong with just one simple word, the word choice you use. When we talk about the 90% process, that's where we do all of the rigor and the song is clarity. We're not experimenting with children. We are sharing clarity.   Jen Lumanlan  10:50 And how does that come out as you're writing a song with children? How are you sharing that clarity?   Kaitlin  10:50 Well, they have it.   Tommy  10:56 Yeah, they have it. A whole collage of words gets written on a board in the classroom and we collectively decide what's the most important jewels of all of these words, and then we expand from there, “Well, words are rhyme with these words, and what can we say about this word that involves another word that we use,” we find out what's important to them and then we just use that, and they become choruses, and they become verses, and then they become part of them after we're gone.   Kaitlin  11:23 Yeah, recently, we were in Virginia, and we were going to kick off a residency by writing a song with some children. And there was a protest at the same time of us because they were afraid of critical race theory, I believe was the guys that never use those words, and also, they're transphobic, and there's a bunch of things. We said, “Come in, sit down, listen, we're not going to kick you out, we're not here for that. We're not going to call the police. You can sit in here and protest. This is a program for children and their parents. Now in that brainstorm the kids, we wanted to talk about power, when we know how we're powerful. This has been a part of our journey during the COVID pandemic is let's recenter so we really know what we do got because so much has been taken when we know our power, and we recognize each other's power. That's the spark. So these kids were like, they came up with probably 50 words about power, spark, energy, and the kids who didn't want to speak could create dance moves. So like when we talk about the affirmations, the movement spaces like we don't use one way to write a song, we don't criticize people for spelling, for phrasing, for rhyming. I'm the worst at rhyming. I love loose rhymes we call them, so why not? Right? Why not demystify the artistic process and give everyone access that's breaking up WHITE supremacy too.   Tommy  12:47 Yeah, and there are even occasions where there's a student who doesn't even want to do the dance or the rap or the nothing, but they want to push the button to start the music, they want to stop it when it's time to stop it, they want to reset it, you know what I mean? They want to do that stuff. They want to help move the chairs so we can make space, you know, they want to do that there for that too. Jen Lumanlan  13:08 So, what happened with the protest?   Kaitlin  13:11 What happened with it? Nothing. But we're going back there in a couple of months, and I'm sure they will have regrouped and come harder.   Tommy  13:17 We spent a little bit of time I believe, I think we both spoke it's after it was over about spending a little bit of time like wondering like, like, “How am I gonna get you like, how am I gonna sting you?” You know what I mean? And then like, that faded after we got so engaged with the kids. Like we kind of forgot about that elephant in the room that was like ready to scrutinize us. Kaitlin  13:34 Yeah, we gave him a chance to share their ideas. They pass.   Tommy  13:39 Yeah, every time this circle came around to their time, we were like, “Here's another opportunity. You can do it. Oh, okay, no. Next time, we're like, here's your opportunity. Oh, okay.   Kaitlin  13:47 Because that's what happens in class too. We're not going to hold any expectation that lingers, right? Because everybody can evolve in a moment and the culture of assigning a role to a child in the classroom is White supremacy culture, because every child is capable of shifting and growing, and it's often the eye of the beholder and missing the clue.   Tommy  14:09 Just because it didn't happen for you last time doesn't mean it might not this time, right?   Jen Lumanlan  14:13 Well, let's hold out hope for those protesters, and what might shift for them next time. Kaitlin  14:19 That's right.   Jen Lumanlan  14:20 There's hope for all of us maybe. So your work really focuses very intentionally on centering children's experience. Why do you think that that is so important as we work towards creating a culture of belonging?   Tommy  14:32 I can say, this is for a long time I've really have been interested in the human experience and as a human, I have been a child before, and I've been in places where I'm like, “Oh, you know what? When I get older, I'm gonna do this. And when I get older, I'm gonna do that. And when I do this and that,” what I really starting to understand about being a teenager about adolescent, about being a little over 18, all those things, their experiences, their human experiences, we're not trying to do at that age is here a bunch of all these cautionary tales, like don't do this and don't do that, because I've been there before, you know what I mean? Like, really just like, we need to be there to help guide that human experience versus dictate it or structure it or all of those things. I gotta say, I'm still like, not the strictest, but my son, he got rules, but at the same time, like letting him have his human experience and letting him have mistakes, let him make him because as a teenager, he makes them. That's really what I'm personally interested in. I know Kaitlin is too, but she's probably got more to say about it.   Kaitlin 15:34 Listening sometimes when we're together, I actually, just listen, they're my parenting coach. So I have a two and five-year-old, and how they are coming up, I mean, I don't want to...