Archive for May 2015
Evidence Based Parenting (I Love Science!)
Are you a kid person? When I had my
first, after a while I realized I just didn’t “get” children, and as I have
taken more of an active role in learning about parenting, I have noticed the
same trait in a lot of other people. I’m not saying any of you are bad parents;
quite the contrary. Most parents I encounter are doing the best they can with
the information they have. You're working your ass off for those kids. All of you! Well, except maybe these people:
That's gonna go in the family album.
License to chill.
Anyway, we are doing a job that few are prepared for, and we're getting less help and support than ever before. I just think we have all been
given a lot of misinformation and been encouraged to trust our gut and listen
to family and friends before turning to evidence and science when it comes to
questions about parenting. When I say science I mean biology, zoology,
psychology, neuroscience and beyond. As parents we have a wealth of knowledge
at our disposal...CALLED THE INTERWEBZ! And yet I notice that some of the biggest debates are about spanking. Wtf.
Parents just seem to rely too much on intuition about how to raise kids, and a lot of times it can be misguided. We like to joke that our babies didn’t come with instruction manuals, and it’s true. People will have us believe that once that baby is in our arms, our parental instinct kicks in, and all of a sudden we know how to raise a child. Not so. The only instinct that kicks in after birth is the biological drive to protect our children. Beyond that, the rest is pretty much multiple choice. I don’t personally know any parents with a degree in child psychology. Chances are, if you are like most parents, you’ve read one or two parenting books (if any at all) and relied on your own common sense from there on out, perhaps Googling a few topics here and there or asking your parents what they did when you grew up.
If you cross your eyes for too long, they'll stick that way! FOREVER!
When Danny was first born and throughout his first year, I
did the same. But I was at a distinct disadvantage from everyone else. My
closest cousins and aunts were 1500 miles away. I did not grow up around anyone
who had a baby. My childhood was unstable at best, so I wasn't really interested in drawing from my own experiences with my parents. I knew almost nothing about
raising a child. So for the first year, I got advice from the people around me,
I checked out Baby Center every so often, I read “Confident Baby Care” by Jo
Frost, and I thought I was good to go. But then something changed. I don’t know what. It was so long ago now.
But somewhere along the line I became seriously interested in parenting. Not merely to get by, not to
make the best of a not-so-ideal situation (I was 20 when I had Danny), but to
really thrive and be the best parent that I could be. So I started reading.
Then I enrolled in school. And I just never stopped learning, and I never
stopped reading.
Parenting has just become my thing. Not that I am
particularly good or skilled, I trip up all the time and scar my children for
life….BUT I have made it my mission to learn everything I can about parenting,
and now that I am armed with more information than ever before, I realized in
the process I adopted a stance on parenting that is called evidence-based, which
is less about your own experiences and more about…well…evidence. For someone
who had no experience or solid intuition about child-rearing, why not look into
child psychology and scientific research on raising children?
Well it seems to be working. I have great kids. They’re
funny and curious, sensitive and generous and positive, and when I look at them
I just can’t believe that something so perfect came out of my own body. Just
the other day, Danny told me that he doesn’t like that there are so many people
in the world who don’t have enough to eat, and asked me if there was anything
our family could do about it. And when I got out of the shower the other day, I
found a small shoebox with a bow on top. Inside were some Legos and a car that
Ash wrapped up as a “present” for me. Today, he brought me flowers from outside
and told me I am special to him. We made a fire in our backyard earlier tonight
so we could toast marshmallows and make S’mores, and the whole time we were
outside Katy was shouting “Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday!” although in reality
it sounded more like “Hap-Birday!” and my heart just melted if only because she
equates fire with birthday candles. Kids are so…fucking…amazing.
Just look at that face.
Of course, they’re not perfect. Just the other day, I
jokingly told Danny he is the king of throwing the baby out with the bathwater
after he went on a tirade about spilled popcorn, and he very seriously said “Well,
you’re the queen of being a rude mom.” Ash recently told me to go live in the
woods when I told him he couldn’t have a popsicle before dinner. Harsh
punishment, but can you blame him? Popsicles are freakin’ delicious.
But I digress. I adopted evidence based parenting because I
wanted a closer relationship with my kids, I wanted to send kids out into the
world that were happy and well-adjusted. I wanted to make the hardest job in
the world most rewarding for both me and my kids. And from everything I’ve
learned, I have noticed there are some things parents seem to be stumbling on
that science (yay, science!) can help with.
I’ve mentioned this before in a post, but I still think that
we have a habit of treating our kids as mini grown-ups; basically expecting
them to be smaller and less refined versions of ourselves. Nothing could be
further from the truth. Take toddlers for example.
If you notice a small child acting up, you usually
see the parent speaking dangerously low in hushed tones telling them to calm
down, sit still, get back over here, put the damn Oreos down because we aren’t
getting those today…any number of pleads and threats. OR they are speaking with
a nice, calm and soothing voice and using perfectly sound reason and logic. Funny thing, it usually doesn’t work. The thing is, kids that age
are completely at the mercy of their right brain; they’re impulsive and
uncivilized and absolutely humiliating in a public place. (I give up wine for 9 months, have a multitude of stretch marks and
haven’t felt fully rested since 2007, and you do me like this, in a grocery store over some cookies? Ungrateful. Selfish.)
You can see it in her devilish eyes; she has already planned her next tantrum.
It seems the problem we have is with the way we are trying
to calm them down. We are patient, rational and calm, assuming that our demeanor will influence theirs. In The
Happiest Toddler on the Block, Dr. Harvey Karp mentions using a method
called ‘Toddlerese’, where you mimic their energy level and emotions to show
them that you GET IT, you know they’re upset and you know why! It kind of makes
you sound like a caveman “Katy MAD! Katy want cookie NOW! Katy doesn’t want to
sit! Katy says NO NO NO!” and it’s embarrassing and stupid and I hate doing it,
but dude…it works. I’m not joking. It really flipping works.
So in that case, we try the Toddlerese because the evidence
shows that being rational does not work with toddlers. We ignore our knee-jerk
reaction to soothe in favor of evidence to the contrary. Something that
legitimately works.
Another example is teenagers. I recently read a book called Nurture Shock, and they did a fantastic
chapter called “The Science of Teen Rebellion.” Basically, they hooked up a bunch of
kids and adults to an MRI machine, and gave them prompts about certain
behaviors, asking them whether they thought the behaviors were good ideas or
bad ideas. Some of the good were things like walking the dog, going to the beach, etc. and
some of the bad were chewing on a light bulb or lighting your hair
on fire. When it came to the dangerous behaviors, the adult’s brains lit up
immediately as a bad idea; they answered instinctively. Teenagers? Not so much.
Yes, they did correctly choose which behaviors were good and bad, but they had
to go through a whole decision making process before answering. The brain scans
did not detect an automatic response as with the adults. The difference?
Experience.
But sure, let's blame all their shortcomings on cell phones!
The same goes for risk taking and poor decision making. I am
sure you’ve experienced a parent yelling at their teenager who jumped off the
roof in a dare and broke their leg. “What were you thinking? What a stupid,
irresponsible thing to do! Do you have a brain in there? I thought you knew
better than that!” Well, yes, they have a brain. But it’s not fully developed
yet, specifically the prefrontal cortex. It doesn’t develop completely until their
mid to late twenties, and guess which functions the prefrontal cortex manages…reasoning
and risk assessment! This also explains why they
are so prone to peer pressure and impulsive behavior. The reward centers in
their brain have, in essence, hijacked their prefrontal cortex and the
temporary high or “reward” they get for their impulsivity eclipses any thoughts
about what could happen.
Jackass: Generations
As a matter of fact, in the same book, there is another MRI study. During the test, the
teens were put in front of a screen and asked to rate their favorite music,
TV shows, celebrities, etc. While answering, they started seeing usernames and
preferences of “other” teenagers pop up randomly on their screen. (There weren't any) At that
realization - that their own preferences could be up for everyone else to see, the
danger and distress levels in their brains immediately lit up. The idea that
their choices in music or clothing would be displayed publicly panicked them.
The brilliant quote at the end of the chapter reads: “That’s the teen brain at fifteen in a nutshell – fearless to jumping
off roofs, but terrified of having its love of Nickelback exposed.”
Take a swig of this MD 20/20 or you're out of the band!
So that’s the “thing.” That’s the evidence. It’s not just
hormones, and our teenagers aren’t just plain stupid. Their brain just works in
different ways and our approach to communicating with them should be altered
accordingly.
Let’s look at an even simpler example. A few decades ago,
parenting “experts” decided that kids needed self-esteem to become high
functioning, confident adults, and thus the era of praise was born. In the last
5 years, however, that has taken quite a turn. The evidence showed that
consistent, over the top praise of the child’s talents and gifts was actually destructive to their self-esteem, doing
the opposite of what we wanted. Instead, we now offer praise for specific
behaviors and acknowledge the child’s work ethic, rather than fawning over a
natural talent. For example “You aced that test! You’re a genius! You’re a math whiz!” That’s a
no-no. Instead, we say “Wow, you did great on that test! You turned in every
piece of homework, studied hard and got extra help when you needed it. You really
earned that grade!” We aren’t setting them up for failure in the future by
insisting they have a natural gift. We are acknowledging that their achievement
came from the amount of effort they put in. Evidence indicates that doing the
latter will encourage them to put the burden of achievement on their
persistence, rather than their innate abilities.
It's okay, sweetie. You'll get by somehow.
Next, and though I really don’t want to get into it, I WILL. We can
use evidence for the vaccination debate. Mountains of evidence show that
vaccines are safe; that they don’t cause autism, and they have worked to all
but eradicate many serious diseases that at one time had (literally and
figuratively) crippled us as a population. All of the evidence we have at our
disposal points to vaccines being perfectly safe to administer to children,
even in the doses and schedules the AAP currently recommends. But then a few
people come along shouting about chemicals, and scary things like autism and
mercury and aluminum, and they’re shouting really loud…appealing to every
parent’s biggest fear: Their child’s safety. Don’t every parent’s ears perk up
when they hear those buzzwords? Mine do. And
they got to a lot of us. A few loud-mouths fabricated some studies and
wrote some books and claimed that “Big Pharma” was trying to inject our kids
with poison, and they got a national platform, and a lot of people listened,
and now we are facing measles and pertussis in epidemic proportions…gahhhh!
"No need, Doc. My life coach told me all I need to do is meditate and I won't get the flu."
Our worries about safety and GMO’s and gluten and our
confidence in our own ability to determine how much formaldehyde we should ingest has us ignoring our medically trained doctors
and running to homeopaths in droves. We want natural! Give us natural remedies for serious ailments! Don’t fill
my kid up with your unnatural chemicals; modern medicine is a SHAM! So now,
instead of giving our copays to trained doctors and trusting decades of peer reviewed medical
research, we’re shelling out money to people like Dr. Oz, who insist our bikini
bodies are just a few goji berries away, and our kids’ serious illnesses can be
cured with diluted lavender essence.
Let’s move on. There are a ton of parenting decisions and
situations that call for the “traditional” way of doing things; or just what
“feels right”, but could be better solved using science and evidence.
You've heard about “spoiling” babies by holding them too much?
Someone in your family will always tell you not to hold the baby too
much or it will become spoiled and never be able to self soothe. Wrong.
Research shows that infants whose needs are attended to quickly and who are
held consistently by caregivers grow into babies and toddlers who are more
confident, less whiny and have a more secure connection with their caregivers. Leaving
your infant alone to soothe himself or letting him “cry it out” significantly
increases his cortisol (stress hormone) levels. Babies who eventually learn to cry
themselves to sleep aren’t soothing themselves; they have become resigned to
the fact that no one is going to come and comfort them. It's okay. Go to your baby.
How about our obsession with over
scheduling activities and our push for academics
as early as humanly possible? Over and over again science shows that
unstructured and pretend play are things that not only stimulate our children
and entertain them, they also make them smarter, creative and imaginative and
less likely to get bored when they don’t have an activity planned. And yet we still we look for the highest rated preschools, we
push our kids to do more homework, to study and play piano and lacrosse and
then get them a tutor in math to get into a good college. To add that,
kids are, on average, are getting two less hours of sleep during the night than they did
in the 1970s, which gives them trouble with concentration and memory, and are subsequently more
anxious, and at a higher risk for becoming depressed and overweight. Yikes. Give yourself a break. Put
out a big cardboard box and just watch them go crazy.
Boyz only. No girls allowed. WAIT...GET OUT OF HERE, EMMA!
And finally, to wrap up my thoughts on evidence based
parenting, I highly recommend you look into authoritative parenting style,
because it has been shown to be the most effective style to raise kids who are
happy and healthy, who are empathetic to others and who have a great
relationship with their parents. Also,
read Nurture Shock and All Joy and No Fun to get some high level thinking
on modern parenting theory and how it’s affecting society. They are less “How-To”
and more about challenging our thinking on traditional parenting.
Thanks for reading, stay curious, stay informed, and as always.....
Sources
