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

In this episode we discuss how to cope with parents’ and children’s fear and anxiety related to the Coronavirus pandemic, how to keep the children busy so you can get some work done (without resorting to hours of screen time), and how to use the time that you are focused on them to develop your family relationships as well as their learning, rather than you driving each other nuts. To download a FREE sample routine to help you organize your days, and also join a FREE one-week workshop to give you the tools you need to cope with this situation, please go to yourparentingmojo.com/coronavirus   Other episodes mentioned in this show Talk Sex Today Understanding the AAP’s new screen time guidelines Raising your child in a digital world   Resources List of video conferencing companies offering free services Geocaching website Nature journaling videos with John Muir Laws   Jump to highlights 00:58 Introduction of episode 04:16 Difference between fear, worry, anxiety, and panic and how they impact a person 07:23 Official diagnosis of anxiety 08:36 Official diagnosis of a panic attack 10:05 What can we do to be less afraid 16:33 Difference between routine and schedule 22:48 A learning exploration 29:49 Parents worry about loneliness 39:50 Realization during the pandemic   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast! I know that listeners who have been with me for a while know that an episode is going to be different when I dispense with the music at the beginning – I think the last time I did this was six months ago when I announced that I was taking a break from the show. But have no fear; I’m not going anywhere – I just did it today to indicate that this is not a normal show because these are not normal times. I’m recording this on March 15 2020, four days after the World Health Organization declared that the coronavirus outbreak is a pandemic, which means it is dispersed across a very wide geographic area and affects many individuals at the same time. Many, many things have been canceled in the last few days – most schools are canceled for at least the next few weeks; big events are canceled or postponed, and we’re being advised to practice ‘social distancing’ by remaining six feet apart from other people. This all seems really big and super stressful and I’m not going to go into the details of much of the epidemiological information because frankly that isn’t my specialty. But I also know that a lot of you are struggling with issues that very much do fall into my wheelhouse – things like “what on earth am I going to do with my kids for the next six weeks when we usually start to get on each other’s nerves on day six of a vacation,” and “will my child get behind on school work,” and “how am I going to still get my own WORK work done so I can get paid and keep us afloat while we’re all cooped up in this tiny space?” So in this episode I’m going to cover two main things – firstly, resources for you, because you may well be feeling quite anxious and approaching the end of your rope already and unsure how you’re going to make it through the coming weeks. Then we’ll talk about issues that affect your children while we’re going through this and how to answer your children’s questions about the virus and how to be thoughtful about screen time when it seems like there’s nothing else to do and also how to support their learning while they’re out of school. And because I know some of you are REALLY stressed out about this, I also want to let you know about a FREE one-week workshop that I’m running starting on March 23rd. It draws together elements of many of the paid workshops and memberships that I’ve built over the last few years into resources that you can use RIGHT NOW. So for example, I’m in the middle of hosting a workshop on Taming Your Triggers, where we spend weeks digging into the many sources of your triggers because we often find that if we understand those better it creates space for us to choose a different reaction. But right now we KNOW the source of our triggers – for many of us it’s our anxiety about the virus and about being cooped up with our kids – whom we love and cherish and enjoy, but just not ALL DAY EVERY DAY. So we go right to the strategies that you can put in place immediately to feel less triggered by the situation, which will allow you to respond more effectively to your child when they’re acting out. We’ll also cover similar, immediately implementable strategies to cope with sibling fighting in a way that gives your children tools to solve their own problems, ways to keep children busy so you can get things done, and how to use their own interests as a jumping off point for real learning that isn’t based on worksheets or spelling drills or math problems for when you do have focused time with them. So if all that sounds like something you could use, just head on over to yourparentingmojo.

A few weeks ago we talked with Dr. Brad Klontz about the 'money scripts' that we pass on to our children - perhaps unintentionally - if we fail to examine these and make conscious decisions about the messages we want to convey about money to our children. Today we continue our series on the intersection of parenting and money with a conversation with Dr. Allison Pugh, whose doctoral dissertation (and subsequent book, Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture) remain seminal works in this field even a decade after their publication. In this interview, we take the position that advertising to children is happening - so what do we do with that? How do children make meaning out of the messages sent to them through our consumerist culture? How do parents attempt to resist the effects of this culture, and how successful are they? In our next episode in this series we'll dig more deeply into the effects of advertising itself on children's brains, so stay tuned for that!   Book mentioned in the episode Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture (Affiliate link).   Other episodes on this series This episode is the second in a series on the intersection of parenting and money. You can find other episodes in this series: 038: The Opposite of Spoiled 105: How to pass on mental wealth to your child 112: How to Set up a Play Room 115: Reducing the Impact of Advertising to Children 118: Are You Raising Materialistic Kids?   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 01:31 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today's episode is part of a series that I'm doing on the Intersection of Childhood and Money. A while back now I interviewed New York Times columnist Ron Lieber, on his book The Opposite of Spoiled and we do use his approach to several topics related to money. But it seemed to me for a while now that there's a lot more to say on this. So more recently, I interviewed Dr. Brad Klontz on his concept of Money Scripts, which are the ideas about money that were passed on to us by our parents and that we will probably pass on to our children as well if we don't critically examine these and potentially make a conscious decision to choose a different path. Another avenue I've been wanting to explore is consumerism since I come from England, which is certainly becoming more Americanized than many other places, but where consumerism still doesn't have the same force that it does here in the US where buying things to express love or because you're feeling sad or just because you feel like it is pretty much considered a birthright. And I spent a lot of time looking for someone to talk with on this topic and finally found our guest today Dr. Allison Pugh. Dr. Pugh is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia whose teaching and research focuses on contemporary work and relationships, and particularly the intertwining of culture, emotions, intimacy and economic life. She's currently a fellow at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles while she writes a book about her research on the automation of work that's historically relied on relationships between people like the caring professions. She wrote the book Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children and Consumer Culture back in 2009, in which she studies how children and parents in both affluent and working class communities in the East Bay Area of California where I live, manage the commercialization of childhood. The book was named by contemporary sociology as one of the 12 most influential books on the family written since 2000 and received several awards. A decade later, it remains the seminal work on this topic. So I'm excited that Dr. Pugh is here today to talk with us and help us think through this important topic. Welcome, Dr. Pugh.   Dr. Pugh 03:26 Thank you so much.   Jen 03:28 All right, so I'd like to start by quoting a few of the very first sentences from the preface of your book. So you say “Ask them straight out and most upper income parents will tell you they don't buy much for their children because they have the ‘right values’. Meanwhile, low income parents will try to convince you they buy quite a bit because they are not ‘in trouble’. Go into their children's bedrooms, however, and you will find many of the same objects Nintendo or Sony gaming system, the collectible cards, the Hello Kitty pencils.” You go on to describe how nine in 10 Americans feel that children today want too many material things. And four out of five parents think Americans overly materialistic society produces over commercialized children. Oh, my goodness. So what are some of the popular reasons why we might think this situation exists?   Dr. Pugh 04:17 Well, the first thing I would say is what is the situation?   Jen 04:19 Yes.   Dr. Pugh 04:20 And the situation is that children have a lot of things and yet Americans are worried about

"Wait, whaaaat?" (I can hear you thinking this now, as you're reading the title for this episode.) When I think of patriarchy, I usually think of a powerful guy in a suit. He's always White. He probably works in government or maybe high up in a corporation. He's part of The System, which is just The Way Things Are Done - and he's never going to listen to me. There's really not much I can do to impact this system. And patriarchy isn't good for any of us. It's not difficult to see how it represses women and any non-straight, White, hetero-presenting male. But the research base is also pretty clear that it harms men as well, by denying them the opportunity to express any emotion other than anger, which is linked to all kinds of both mental and physical health problems. But it turns out that a big part of perpetuating the patriarchal system is how women interact with men, as well as how we raise our children. And, suddenly, changing the patriarchal system becomes something that I can directly impact - and so can you. Listener Brian Stout and I interview the preeminent scholar in this field, Dr. Carol Gilligan, who is co-author (with Naomi Snider) of the book Why does patriarchy persist? In this episode we focus on the background information we need to understand what patriarchy is and how it impacts us, and in a future episode Brian and I return to discuss the implications of these ideas for the way we are raising our children. If you'd like to subscribe to Brian's newsletter, where he discusses issues related to Building a World of Belonging, you can do that here.   Dr. Carol Gilligan's Books: Why Does Patriarchy Persist? In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development Darkness Now Visible: Patriarchy's Resurgence and Feminist Resistance The Birth of Pleasure: A New Map of Love   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"]   Jen: 00:01:26 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. It's hard to know even where to begin on today's topic, which is patriarchy. Now, before you think to yourself, come on, Jen, aren't you overstepping your bounds a little bit here or maybe even am I listening to the right podcast? If you're seeing this topic as a bit of a non-sequitur with the kinds of issues that we normally discuss on the show related to parenting and child development, then I'd really encourage you to sit tight because this topic has everything to do with those things. I'm so honored that today we have an incredibly special guest to help us understand more about this topic and that's Dr. Carol Gilligan. I'm pretty sure there's a group of my listeners for whom Dr. Gilligan needs no introduction because they probably read and loved her work when they were in college, but for the rest of us, Dr. Gilligan received her Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from Swarthmore College, a Master’s in Clinical Psychology from Radcliffe College and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Harvard University. Her 1982 book In a Different Voice is widely regarded as a landmark and following her research on women and girls development, she began to study young boys and their parents as well as the relationship between men and women. Dr. Gilligan taught at Harvard for more than 30 years and is now on the faculty at New York University where she co-teaches a seminar on resisting injustice. That was the impetus for her most recent book. This was coauthored with one of her students Naomi Snider, and it's called, Why Does Patriarchy Persist? Welcome Dr. Gilligan.   Dr. Gilligan: 00:02:47 Oh, thank you, Jen. My pleasure.   Jen: 00:02:49 And joining me today is the listener who's brainchild this episode was Brian Stout. Brian holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Amherst College and a Masters in International Relations from Johns Hopkins and he has a background in foreign policy, conflict prevention and international development. Brian's been exploring his role in dismantling patriarchal systems for some time now. So today we're going to explore what patriarchy is and why it matters to us as parents and then Brian and I are going to be back very soon in a second episode to think through, okay, now we know more about this. What do we as parents do about it? Welcome Brian.   Brian: 00:03:24 Thank you. I'm honored to be here.   Jen: 00:03:26 All right, so maybe we should start at the beginning. Dr. Gilligan I'm a reasonably well educated and widely read person and I'm really not sure I could have accurately defined what patriarchy is until I'd read some of your books and so I knew it was about men and I knew it was not really a good thing, but can you enlighten us a bit more and just give us a working definition, please?   Dr. Gilligan: 00:03:46 Well, you know, it's interesting because I myself, I mean I think I would have said what you said until I was doing research with girls actually and following girls from when they were beginning

Think about your parents. Now think about money. What kinds of ideas, images, and feelings come to mind? Do you recall any discussions about money - or were these hidden from you? Was there always enough to go around - or were you ever-conscious of its absence? What little incidents do you recall that ended up becoming defining 'money scripts' of your life? Perhaps it won't be a shock to learn that just as we learned how to raise children from our parents, we also learned how to think about money from them. And as we will raise our children the way we were raised unless we choose a different path, we will also pass on our ideas about money - unless we decide differently. Today we hear from Dr. Brad Klontz, co-author of the book Mind over Money: Overcoming the Money Disorders That Threaten Our Financial Health (Affiliate link), who helps us to think through the money scripts we want to pass on to our children - and how to adjust course if we decide we need to do this. Find more information from Dr. Klontz on his YouTube channel.   Other episodes in this series This episode is the first in a series on the intersection of parenting and money. You can find other episodes in this series: 038: The Opposite of Spoiled 107: The impact of consumerism on children 112: How to Set up a Play Room 115: Reducing the Impact of Advertising to Children 118: Are You Raising Materialistic Kids?   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"]   Jen: 01:36 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today's episode kicks off what I'm hoping is at least going to be a miniseries on issues related to money and economic privilege, although I'm still in the process of figuring out exactly where we're going with this. So, quite a long time ago now, we talked with New York Times columnist, Ron Lieber about money and we got a high level overview of some of the problems we can face when we're thinking about how to talk with children about money. So, things like from what information to give at what age and what to do when your child nags you to buy something that they want at a store. But a friend recommended that I read the book that our guest today co-wrote with his father. His father is Dr.Ted Klontz and the book is called Mind over Money: Overcoming the Money Disorders That Threaten Our Financial Health. So our guests, Dr. Brad Klontz holds a Doctorate in Psychology. He's a certified financial planner. He co-founded the Financial Psychology Institute and he's an Associate Professor of Practice in Financial Psychology at Creighton University Heider College of Business. So, we're here today to take our conversation on money to the next level by thinking through how our own relationship with money will impact our children's relationship with money. Welcome, Dr. Klontz.   Dr. Klontz: 02:45 I'm so happy to be here and I'm really happy that hopefully I can get some parenting mojo and a conversation too.   Jen: 02:51 Do you have children?   Dr. Klontz: 02:52 I do. I have 2 children.   Jen: 02:53 How old are they?   Dr. Klontz: 02:54 I've got a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old.   Jen: 02:57 Oh, okay.   Dr. Klontz: 02:58 And it's sort of amazing what they're already reflecting back to me on what I'm sort of unconsciously teaching them around money.   Jen: 03:03 I can imagine. Okay. So, you should know that it's perfectly fine to share personally learned lessons with us.   Dr. Klontz: 03:09 Okay, I'll do my best.   Jen: 03:11 All right, cool. So, let's dive right in. I wonder if you can kind of get to the crux of your book, which I think is about this idea that you call money scripts. What is a money script?   Dr. Klontz: 03:20 Yeah, so I got really curious. I grew up myself in a, my mom likes to say we were middle-class except lower. And I said, well, they have words for that, but we don't have to say what those are.   Jen: 03:30 Yeah. We need to say them.   Dr. Klontz: 03:32 Right. But I became really curious at a young age, I was surrounded by a loving family of real hard workers who never seem to really get ahead financially. And so I sort of had that inquisitive mind, I think as a child. And so going through my adolescence and then later on professionally, I was always really curious about how people look at the world differently, whether it's different religions or different sort of socioeconomic backgrounds. We all sort of have this worldview and it sort of collects around people who are similar to us. So, I became really curious. That's sort of the framework.   Dr. Klontz: 04:04 And so a large part of my research into the realm of financial psychology has been looking at what we call money scripts, which are these beliefs about money that are passed down to us, typically from our parents, our grandparents, our culture, society at large. You know, these are things that sort of get into our subconscious mind around what

Listeners have been asking me for an episode on supporting anxious children for a loooooong time, but I was really struggling to find anyone who didn't take a behaviorist-based approach (where behaviors are reinforced using the parent's attention (or stickers) or the withdrawal of the parent's attention or other 'privileges.'). Long-time listeners will see that these approaches don't really fit with how we usually view behavior on the show, which is an expression of a need - if you just focus on extinguishing 'undesirable' behavior, you haven't really done anything about the child's need and - even worse - you've sent a message to the child that they can't express their true feelings and needs to you. Listener Jamie sent me a link a book called Beyond Behaviors written by today's guest, Dr. Mona Delahooke, and I immediately knew that Dr. Delahooke was the right person to guide us through this. Listener Jamie comes onto the show for the first time as well to co-interview Dr. Delahooke so we can really deeply understand our children's feelings and support them in meeting their true needs - and overcome their anxiety as well.     Dr. Mona Delahooke's Books Beyond Behaviors: Using Brain Science and Compassion to Understand and Solve Children's Behavioral Challenges Beyond Behaviors Flip Chart: A Psychoeducational Tool to Help Therapists & Teachers Understand and Support Children with Behavioral Changes (Affiliate links).   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen: 01:28 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today, we're talking about a topic that parents have been asking me about for ages and that is how to support children who are experiencing anxiety. Now, it's not super hard to find research on anxiety and on treatments for anxiety, but the hard part is finding someone who doesn't just see anxiety as an unwanted behavior that we need to extinguish using reinforcements and who actually sees anxiety as a potential cause for behaviors like having a bad attitude or lacking impulse control that we might typically think of as bad behavior rather than being caused by anxiety. So, we have a special guest today who's going to help us move beyond this view of anxiety and that's Dr. Mona Delahooke. Dr. Delahooke is a licensed clinical psychologist with more than 30 years of experience caring for children in their families. She's a member of the American Psychological Association and holds the highest level of endorsement in the field of infant and toddler mental health in California, as a Reflective Practice Mentor. She has dedicated her career to promoting compassionate relationship-based neurodevelopmental interventions for children with developmental, behavioral, emotional and learning difficulties and has written a book called Beyond Behaviors: Using Brain Science and Compassion to Understand and Solve Children's Behavioral Challenges. Welcome Dr. Delahooke.   Dr. Delahooke: 02:43 Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.   Jen: 02:45 Thank you. And we have another special guest here today as well. We've heard about her, we've heard her words and now we're going to hear her very own voice. Today, we have with us listener, Jamie. She's not listener Jamie to us. She's Jamie Ramirez in real life and she and her wife are the proud parents of now 11-month-old daughter Elliot. Jamie struggled with anxiety for a good deal of her life and has also read on this topic a lot. And she was the one who suggested that I read Dr. Delahooke’s book and so when Dr. Delahooke agreed to an interview, it was only natural to ask Jamie to join me as a co-interviewer and she enthusiastically agreed. Welcome Jamie.   Jamie: 03:22 Hi.   Jen: 03:23 Yey, you’re here. All right, so let's start kind of at the beginning I guess by talking about how Dr. Delahooke’s thinking about anxiety is different from the way that most researchers and psychologists think about it and treat anxiety and children. So Jamie, I wonder if you could start by reading one of your favorite passages from Dr. Delahooke’s book and then perhaps we can contrast this with the more common view on anxiety. So do you want to go ahead and do that?   Jamie: 03:48 Yeah.   Jen: 03:49 Okay.   Jamie: 03:50 “The truth is that we scrutinized children's behavior from the time that they're born. “She's such a good baby”, we might say of a newborn who is easy to care for, doesn't cry too much, sleeps through the night and whose moods are predictable and easy to read. Without realizing it, we are betraying our cultures understandable bias toward valuing behaviors that we can easily understand and that make our own lives easier as caregivers, teachers, or other providers. As children reach school age, we lavished praise in good grades on those who are good listeners, follow directions and can sit still and perform well on tests. We often reward these good behaviors with positive rec

Dr. Rose defines a Dark Horse as someone who uses a variety of unusual strategies like understanding their 'micromotives' and not worrying about their overall destination and to focus instead on more immediate goals to create a fulfilled life. In his book he focuses on the paths adults have followed to become Dark Horses, which is almost invariably one of either: Child is successful in school, attends an elite university, achieves financial stability, realizes they feel unfilled, and switches direction mid-lifeChild flounders in school and barely graduates or doesn't graduate; gets married and has children or works a series of low-level jobs before discovering their path But I wondered: rather than following either of these (highly frustrating!) paths, could we instead support our children much earlier in life to discover how their passions can lead them toward a fulfilling life, rather than forcing them through a standardized system and then making them figure it out on their own later? Dr. Rose agreed that this would indeed be the preferable path, and we also talked about how to do this. Dark Horse: Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment can be purchased in your local bookstore or on Amazon. (Affiliate link)   Learning Membership Want to know what skills YOU need to raise a dark horse? The Learning Membership is here to help you. Make learning a fun adventure that not only strengthens your bond, but also nurtures your child’s intrinsic love of learning—an essential foundation for success in an AI-driven world. Get tools and strategies to support your child’s love of learning and future-proof their success in navigating whatever comes their way. No special skills needed—just a willingness to explore alongside them. All the usual stuff applies - sliding scale pricing, money back guarantee.   Click the banner to learn more!     Here is Dr. Rose's interview on The Art of Manliness, where you can learn more about how his approach could help you as an adult to become more of a Dark Horse     [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"]   Jen 00:01:25 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today's episode comes to us via a bit of a different route than they often do. A friend of mine actually heard our guests, Dr. Todd Rose on The Art of Manliness podcast and said, “Hey, you might want to listen to this because it sounds a lot like what you're trying to do with the way your daughter Carys learns”. And I listened to the episode and then I did something I've never done before. The message that I heard from Dr. Rose on the podcast made him feel like such a kindred spirit in terms of how we think about learning and work, that I reached out to him and asked him to talk with us even before I read his book. And rather than go over ground that's already been covered elsewhere, I'd really encourage you to go to this episode's page at YourParentingMojo.com/DarkHorse to find a link to that episode on The Art of Manliness because there's so much there to help adults discover and follow their passions if you're feeling unfulfilled in the work...

I’m taking a hiatus from the show; in this episode I explain why and what you can do to help make sure it comes back strong in 2020!Here’s the form to complete if you’re interested in learning more about the yet-to-be-named pilot membership to support children’s interest-led learning at home: https://forms.gle/GGKgdwaLkEfNfMA27

Do you ever feel ‘lost’ in your parenting? Like you’ve read all the books (and even listened to the podcast episodes!) and you’ve agreed with them in principle, but somehow nothing ever seems to change?   Your family feels directionless; you just muddle along having the same old fights with your partner about the same old things: Should you praise your child when they do what you ask, so they’ll do it again next time? Or punish them for disobeying you?Should you worry about (quality or quantity of) screen time?Does it matter if you and your partner have completely different parenting styles?   In this episode I interviewed Kathryn, and discussed: The cultural differences between living in the U.K. and Canada (saying “please!” and certain differences in directness of humor)How to begin to approach differences in opinion about parenting with your spouse in a way that doesn’t get their back up, but instead focuses on your (and their) valuesThe value of interacting with parents who are a little ahead of you and who can give you advice, as well as parents with younger children so you can see how far you’ve come and offer some support to themHow to align your daily interactions with your child with your overall valuesThe importance of bringing fun and playfulness to your parenting in a way that feels relaxed to you (and the positive impact this can have on your child)How to problem solve with a child in a way that encourages them to bring their own solutions to the table   Parenting Membership If parenting feels really hard, and it seems like you’ve read all the books and you’ve asked for advice in free communities and you’re tired of having to weed through all the stuff that isn’t aligned with your values to get to the few good nuggets, then the Parenting Membership will help you out.   The Parenting Membership is now open for immediate enrollment. Sign up now!       Jump to highlights 01:39 Introducing the guest 07:25 Differences in parenting between the English and the Canadian 15:43 Particular areas that were attractive to Kathryn in terms of the focus of the group 23:48 Transformations that she experienced in her family once she joined the group 32:08 What might have happened if she hadn’t joined the group 36:03 Final thought of Kathryn

This is the third episode in our series on parental relationships – and the lack thereof… We started with episode 35, which was called “All Joy and No Fun,” where we learned how children can be one of the greatest joys of a parent’s life – but that all the daily chores and struggles can get on top of us and make parenting – both in terms of our relationship with our child and our spouse – something that isn’t necessarily much fun in the moment. And if you missed that episode you might want to go back and check it out, because I walked you through a research-based idea I’ve been using to increase the amount of fun I have while I’m hanging out with my daughter, who was a toddler when I recorded that episode. Then we took a turn for the worse in episode 36 and looked at the impact of divorce on children’s development, and we learned that it can have some negative impacts for some children, although the majority are pretty resilient and do make it through a divorce OK. For the last episode in the long-delayed conclusion to this mini-series we’re going to take a look at what happens after divorce – things like single parenting and remarriage and stepfamilies, that can also have large impacts on children’s lives. We’ll spend a good chunk of the show looking at things that stepfamilies can do to be more successful.   Jump to highlights 01:01 Introduction of episode 02:15 The things we don’t understand well 06:37 30% of the children live with their unmarried parent 14:36 Impacts of remarriage on a child’s development 15:55 Lists of common areas where stepfather encounters problem after remarriage 17:21 What can we learn from the research 19:05 Definition of authoritative parenting 24:34 Models of blended family 35:44 2 different schools of thought 36:38 Dr. William Jeynes' conclusion of remarriage 38:38 Conclusion of the episode   References Braithwaite, D.O., Olson, L.N., Golish, T.D., Soukup, C., & Turman, P. 001). “Becoming a family”: Developmental processes represented in blended family discourse. Journal of Applied Communication Research 29(3), 221-247. Choi, J-K, & Pyun, H-S. (2014). Nonresident fathers’ financial support, informal instrumental support, mothers’ parenting, and child development in single-mother families with low income. Journal of Family Issues 35(4), 526-546. DOI: 10.1177/0192513X13478403 Coleman, M., & Ganong, L.H. (1997). Stepfamilies from the stepfamily’s perspective. Marriage & Family Review 26(1-2), 107-121. Fine, M.A., Coleman, M., & Ganong, L.H. (1998). Consistency in perceptions of the step-parent role among step-parents, parents and stepchildren. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 15(6), 810-828. Fine, M.A., & Kurdek, L.A. (1995). Relation between marital quality and (step)parent-child relationship quality for parents and stepparents in stepfamilies. Journal of Family Psychology 9(2), 216-223. Furstenberg, Jr., F.F. (1988). Child care after divorce and remarriage. In E.M. Hetherington & J.D. Arasteh (Eds.), Impact of divorce, single parenting, and stepparenting on children. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Ganong, L.H., Coleman, M., & Jamison, T. (2011). Patterns of stepchild – stepparent relationship development. Journal of Marriage and Family 73(2), 396-413. Hequembourg, A. (2004). Unscripted motherhood: Lesbian mothers negotiating incompletely institutionalized family relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 21(6), 739-762. DOI: 10.1177/0265407504047834 Hetherington, E.M. (1993). An overview of the Virginia longitudinal study of divorce and remarriage with a focus on early adolescence. Journal of Family Psychology 7(1), 39056. Jackson, A.P., & Scheines, R. (2005). Single mothers’ self-efficacy, parenting in the home environment, and children’s development in a two-wave study. Social Work Research 29(1), 7-20. Jeyes, W.H. (2006). The impact of parental remarriage on children. Marriage & Family Review 40(4), 75-102. Kumar, K. (2017). The blended family life cycle. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage 58(2), 110-125. Livingston, G. (2014, December 22). Fewer than half of U.S. kids today live in a ‘traditional’ family. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/22/less-than-half-of-u-s-kids-today-live-in-a-traditional-family/ Livingston, G. (2014, November 14). Four-in-ten couples are saying “I Do,” again: Growing number of adults have remarried. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/11/14/four-in-ten-couples-are-saying-i-do-again/ Lucas, N., Nicholson, J.M., & Erban, B. (2013). Child mental health after parental separation: The impact of resident/nonresident parenting, parent mental health, conflict and socioeconomics. Journal of Family Studies 19(1), 53-69. DOI: 10.5172/jfs.2013.19.1.53 Maccoby, E.E., Buchanan, C.M., Mnookin, R.H., & Dornbush, S.M. (1993). Postdivorce roles of mothers and fathers in the lives of their child

I can hardly believe we made it to this point: the 100th episode of the Your Parenting Mojo podcast! Join me for a special celebration of the show, featuring questions (from you!) and answers (from me!), clips of some of my favorite episodes, some fun at NPR interviewer Terry Gross’ expense, the occasional Monty Python reference, a story about how Carys got her name that you won’t want to miss.

Is your child Highly Sensitive? Does it sometimes feel as though you don’t understand them, and struggle to support them in the ways it seems they need to be supported? Or does your child experience and process things more deeply than other children, but this is the first time you’re hearing about High Sensitivity? In this episode Dr. Michael Pluess helps us to understand how we can know whether our child is highly sensitive, and how to parent these children effectively so they can reach their full potential.   References Aron, E. N., Aron, A., & Jagiellowicz, J. (2012). Sensory processing sensitivity: A review in the light of the evolution of biological responsivity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16, 262–282. Aron, E. N., Aron, A., & Davies, K. M. (2005). Adult shyness: the interaction of temperamental sensitivity and an adverse childhood environment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 181-197. Aron, E.N. (2002). The highly sensitive child: Helping our children thrive when the world overwhelms them. New York, NY: Harmony. Aron, E. N., & Aron, A. (1997). Sensory-processing sensitivity and its relation to introversion and emotionality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 345-368. Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2011). Differential susceptibility to rearing environment depending on dopamine-related genes: New evidence and a meta-analysis. Development and Psychopathology, 23, 39–52. Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., Van IJzendoorn, M. H., Pijlman, F. T., Mesman, J., & Juffer, F. (2008). Experimental evidence for differential susceptibility: dopamine D4 receptor polymorphism (DRD4 VNTR) moderates intervention effects on toddlers' externalizing behavior in a randomized controlled trial. Developmental Psychology, 44, 293-300. Belsky, J., & Puess, M. (2013). Beyond risk, resilience, and dysregulation: Phenotypic plasticity and human development. Development and Psychopathology 25, 1243-1261. Belsky, J., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & Van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2007). For better and for worse: Differential Susceptibility to environmental influences. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 300-304. Bouvette-Turcot, A-A., Pluess, M., Bernier, A., Pennestri, M-H., Levitan, R., Skolowski, M.B., Kennedy, J.L., Minde, K., Steiner, M., Pokhvisneva, I., Meaney, M.J., & Gaudreau, H. (2015). Effects of genotype and sleep on temperament. Pediatrics 136(4), e914-e921. Pluess, M. (2015). Vantage sensitivity: Environmental sensitivity to positive experiences as a function of genetic differences. Journal of Personality 85(1), 38-50. Pluess, M. (2015). Individual differences in environmental sensitivity. Child Development Perspectives 9(3), 138-143. Pluess, M., & Boniwell, I. (2015). Sensory processing sensitivity predicts treatment response to a school-based depression prevention program Evidence of Vantage Sensitivity. Personality and Individual Differences 82, 40-45. Pluess, M., & Belsky, J. (2013). Vantage sensitivity: Individual differences in response to positive experiences. Psychological Bulletin 139(4), 901-916. Pluess, M., & Belsky, J. (2011). Differential susceptibility to maternal sensitivity. Maternal Sensitivity: A critical review for practitioners, 95-107. Retrieved from http://philosonic.com/michaelpluess_construction/Files/PluessBelsky_2010_Differential%20Susceptibility%20to%20Maternal%20Sensitivity.pdf Pluess, M. & Belsky, J. (2010). Differential susceptibility to parenting and quality child care. Developmental Psychology 46(2), 379-390.  

A few months ago a listener in my own home town reached out because a potentially incendiary device had been found on the elementary school property, and many parents were demanding disaster drill training in response. The listener wanted to know whether there is any research on whether these drills are actually effective in preparing children for these situations, and whether it’s possible that they might actually cause psychological damage. In this episode we review the (scant) evidence available on drills themselves, and also take a broader look at the kinds of measures used in schools in the name of keeping our children safe – but which may actually have the opposite from intended effect. Read Full Transcript Jen 01:21 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We have another serious topic to cover today and it's probably one that you don't want to listen to with children around. I received a question from listener Selena about 6 months ago saying that an incendiary device had been discovered on the grounds of the public school that my daughter would actually going to be attend if we weren't going to homeschool. And that some of the parents who were very worried and were demanding video surveillance and disaster preparedness drills and she wants to know whether there was any research available about the impacts of drills to prepare children for things like active shooters. And I wanted to know are these drills effective? And then when I started researching this issue, I went down a complete rabbit hole related to the effectiveness of other kinds of school security measures as well as bullying, as a potential cause of violence in schools. Jen 02:08 And the kind of relational aggression that girls particularly to practice as well. So expect episodes on those topics soon in the coming months. But here to kick us off today on this mini series is Dr. Ben Fisher. He's Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at University of Louisville. Dr. Fisher’s research focuses on the intersection of education and criminal justice, but particular focus on school safety, security and discipline. He approaches this research from an interdisciplinary perspective with a focus on inequality that is grounded in his Ph.D. in community research and action from Vanderbilt University, which prepared him to work on this view from a social justice orientation. Welcome Dr. Fisher. Dr. Fisher 02:46 Thank you. Glad to be here. Jen 02:47 And so before we get going with our conversation today, I do want to just take a minute and acknowledge that we're recording this in the week after a gunman killed 22 people in Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and then another gunman killed 9 people outside a bar in Dayton, Ohio. So, it feels very raw to me to be discussing this today. We're going to talk today about the likelihood that a child will be killed in a school shooting. And despite the impression that we might get from the endless news cycles that keep these kinds of incidents top of mind when they happen, our chances of dying from many other causes are far, far greater than dying during a mass murder. But despite this, I do believe there are too many guns in our society and not enough control over who has access to them and what they do once they have them. Jen 03:30 And I also think that these kinds of events are not the ultimate problems we need to deal with. Yes, we need to make it much more difficult to access guns. So, people who feel disaffected can't harm large numbers of people very easily and instituting tighter gun control in a country where so much of the political power is tied to the money provided by the gun lobby currently seems like a really insurmountable challenge. But in my mind, the far greater challenges, the one facing our families and schools where we need to address what is leading children and later adults to feel so disconnected from their families and communities, but the best tool they have to express their emotions is to kill people. So with that said, let's talk about some ways we might be able to do this. Okay. So let's start by putting this topic in context because I think many parents, myself included before I started this research, are probably under the impression that there's kind of an epidemic of violence and particularly violence perpetrated by people with guns in schools. Dr. Fisher, can you help us understand whether that is in fact the case? Dr. Fisher 04:26 Well, we certainly do have a problem with violence in our country as we've seen in very clear fashion this past week. However, the statistics also indicate that our countries become safer and safer over the past two decades in terms of crime and victimization rights. Schools in particular have not been as safe as they are in the past 20 years in terms of rates of all sorts of crime and violence in schools. So although violence certainly does continue to be a problem, particularly gun violence and many of its forms compared

Recently a listener posted a question in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group asking about research related to children who are assigned to one gender at birth, but later realize that this assigned gender doesn’t match the gender they experience.   Another listener recommended Dr. Diane Ehrensaft’s book The Gender-Creative Child, and we are fortunate that Dr. Ehrensaft quickly agreed to speak. Listener Elizabeth co-interviews with me as we learn how to truly listen to our children when they tell us about their gender, and what we can do to help them navigate a world full of people who may know very little about – and even fear – children whose gender does not conform to expectations.   While we didn’t get a chance to discuss it (too many other topics to cover!), you might also be interested to learn about the “They-by” movement, which advocates for allowing children to choose their own gender when they feel the time is right, rather than the parents assigning a gender at birth based on the child’s genetalia.   Here are some especially recommended resources:   Human Rights Campaign’s Guide on supporting transgender children: https://assets2.hrc.org/files/documents/SupportingCaringforTransChildren.pdf?_ga=2.156922811.1499059672.1559845994-1938179427.1559845994   Recommended books for children – for ALL children, not just those actively exploring their gender identity (note: these are affiliate links): 10,000 Dresses The Adventures of Tulip, Birthday Wish Fairy My Princess Boy The Paperbag Princess Mama, Mommy, and Me Daddy, Papa, and Me Who Are You? The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity I am Jazz Julian is a Mermaid Introducing Teddy   Read Full Transcript Jen: 00:01:21 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today, we're going to talk about a topic that originated from a question in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. Now, sometimes I have questions on my list for a long time, but other times when someone expresses an interest in a topic, they also point me toward a place to start the research, which really does speed things up and that's actually what happened with this episode. So, listener Elizabeth asked if I'd done an episode on children's gender identity and some other listeners chimed in with potential resources, one of which was Dr. Diane Ehrensaft’s book, The Gender Creative Child. And after I read the book, I knew that Dr. Diane Ehrensaft was the right person to talk to about this topic. So, she's here with us today. Dr. Ehrensaft is a Developmental and Clinical Psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Director of Mental Health and founding member of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center, a partnership between the University of California, San Francisco and community agencies to provide comprehensive into disciplinary services and advocacy to gender conforming and transgender children and youth and their families. She's an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco and the chief psychologist at the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Child and Adolescent Gender Center Clinic. Her research and writing focuses on the areas of child development, gender, gender nonconforming and transgender children and youth parenting, parent-child relationships and LGBTQI families. She also serves on the board of Gender Spectrum and National Organization offering educational training and advocacy services to promote gender acceptance for youth of all genders. Welcome Dr. Ehrensaft. Dr. Ehrensaft: 00:02:52 Thank you so much for having me. Jen: 00:02:54 So, to help us understand more about the research on this topic as well as what to do with it practically in our real lives as parents, listener Elizabeth is here as well. Her child, John was assigned a male gender at birth. John is now 4 and has been telling his parents pretty insistently for a while now that he is a girl, even though he still likes to use the pronouns he, him and his as well as the name his parents gave him at birth. Welcome Elizabeth. Elizabeth: 00:03:18 Thank you. I am glad to be here as well. Jen: 00:03:20 And so I do want to say briefly before we get started that even if your child seems fairly convinced that the gender they were assigned at birth is the one they want to express, that you might want to listen to this episode anyway because I'd say there's a reasonable chance that somebody in your child's class is probably somehow exploring their gender identity. And so knowing the information we're gonna discuss today will help both you and your child be a better friend and ally. So, let's start off with some terminology please, Dr. Ehrensaft because I didn't know a lot about this topic before I started researching it. And even now I find I have to constantly revisit the definitions to remember what's what. So, can you kind of give us a crash course in some of the terminology we’ll be using today, please? Dr. Ehrensaft: 00:04:00 Absolutely. So, we start ou

This is another of those topics I really wish I didn’t have to do. In this interview with Dr. Jennie Noll of Pennsylvania State University, we discuss the impacts that sexual abuse can have on a child (even many years after the event itself!), and we talk extensively about what parents can do to prevent abuse from happening in the first place. If you want to be sure to remember this info, there’s a FREE one-page cheat sheet of the 5 Key Steps Parents Can Take to Prevent Sexual Abuse available here: Get the FREE Guide!   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"]   Jen: 01:26 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We have a pretty serious topic to cover today and it's what I've been thinking about for a long time now. In 2016 the USA gymnastics sexual assault scandal broke and we learned that Dr. Larry Nassar had been sexually assaulting gymnast for years as he claimed to be providing them legitimate medical treatment. Now obviously there were failings at so many levels here. This was reported and ignored and covered up at many levels. But one thing that stuck in the back of my mind was an interview with gymnast Aly Raisman where she said she really thought this was what medical treatment was like and I want to be 100% clear that I'm not blaming Raisman or any other gymnast who had this awful experience, but I just couldn't get my head around how and why she didn't know she was being sexually abused.   Jen: 02:11 I realized that it's at least partly because we live in a culture where we don't talk about this. We don't teach children to watch for warning signs and we don't look out for them ourselves as parents or we pretend we don't see them. We just stick our head in the sand. So today's episode is probably not one you want to listen to with children around because we're going to be very explicit and discussing sexual abuse and how to prevent it. I also want to give a shout out to listener Christine who helped me to think through some great questions to ask my guest today. I spent a really long time looking for someone to talk with us about this and finally found the right person. Dr. Jennie Noll is Professor of Human Development and Family Studies and Director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network at Penn State University.   Jen: 02:52 She earned her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology and Statistical Methodology from the University of Southern California. The reason I’m so interested to talk with her about this topic is because she has active research projects on two topics that are very important to us, the long-term health outcomes for victims of child sexual abuse and programs for the prevention of that abuse. Welcome Dr. Noll.   Dr. Noll: 03:13 Thank you very much for the opportunity.   Jen: 03:16 So before we get started, I actually also want to mention that I took the training that Dr. Noll studies and it's called Stewards of Children and it's published by an organization called Darkness to Light. I've created a free one page guide to preventing sexual abuse that you can download from this episode's page at YourParentingMojo.com/SexualAbuse. So we're going to talk a lot more about the Stewards of Children program today I imagine. But I wonder if we can get started by looking at the mental health or the general health actually impacts of sexual abuse because I was really surprised to find out how many of these there are. Can you walk us through these and do we have any indication of how likely they are to occur in a child who is chronically abused for years versus one who experiences abuse that it's discovered or reported fairly quickly.   Dr. Noll: 03:58 Yeah, very good. So what we've understood and this has been my work for the last 30 years, what we've understood really well as sort of the mental health and emotional health consequences of abuse. We have pretty good trauma informed treatments for mental health. These are things like persisting posttraumatic stress disorder, other anxiety disorders, depression, other sorts of attachment related disorders in terms of not being able to attach to a partner, relationship difficulties, and substance abuse. These kinds of things that we normally think about as mental health or emotional health. But what we're learning I think in the last decade is something that surprised a lot of us and that is just how we see sort of physical health consequences that we didn't really anticipate when we were just studying mental and emotional health and these are things like physical health disorders, these are heart attacks, obesity, strokes, stress-related diseases like inflammation, interferences with disease processes. Dr. Noll: 05:04 These are the kinds of things that we see in chronically stressed populations like PTSD Vietnam vets, people who have endured long and chronic stressors in their lives early on. And we think about this as how does stress sort of get under the skin an

A couple of months ago, when I was interviewing listener Rose Hoberman for her Sharing Your Parenting Mojo episode, she casually mentioned after we got off air that her father in law – Dr. Benard Dreyer – is the immediate past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and would I like her to make a connection? I almost coughed up my water as I said yes, please, I very much would like her to make a connection if he would be interested in answering listener questions about the AAP’s policies and work. Dr. Dreyer gamely agreed to chat, and in this wide-ranging conversation we cover the AAP’s stance on sleep practices, screen time, discipline, respect among physicians, and what happens when the organization reverses itself… Read Full Transcript Jen 00:01:37 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Regular listeners might recall that I launched a new segment of the show a couple months back called Sharing Your Parenting Mojo where I interviewed listeners about what they've learned from the show and what parenting issues they’re still struggling with. My second interview for this segment was with listener Rose Hoberman and at the end of our conversation she just kinda casually threw out, “so, you know, my father in law is actually a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. So let me know if you'd like to interview him.” And I was kind of shell shocked for a minute and I just said, yes, if you could set that up for me as soon as you can, I'd really appreciate it. So here with us today is Dr. Benard Dreyer who's Director of the Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics and also a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the Hassenfeld Children's Hospital, which is part of New York University Langone. Jen: 00:02:26 Dr. Dreyer works closely with children who have autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, language delays, genetic problems and behavioral difficulties in school. Dr. Dreyer received his M.D. from New York University and he held a variety of leadership positions within the AAP before serving as its president in 2016 and he continues to serve as its Medical Director for Policies. Dr. Dreyer has also hosted the SiriusXM Satellite Radio Show On Call For Kids, a two-hour show that has run two to three times a month since 2008, which is incredible coming from a podcast perspective. Welcome Dr. Dreyer. Dr. Dreyer: 00:03:02 Pleasure to be here. Jen: 00:03:03 So I solicited most of the questions from this interview from people who are subscribed to the show via my website and who get emails from me and they were able to email me back and send me their questions as well as those who are in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. One thing that really stuck out to me as the questions started rolling in was the extent to which parents, at least in the US to some extent abroad, really like to know what the American Academy of Pediatrics says about a particular topic. And they might not always agree with the AAP’s position and they might even make a decision to ignore the AAP’s advice, but they always like to know what the AAP says before they do that. So the position that AAP takes really does carry a lot of weight. I wonder if you can walk us through what it's like to make one of these recommendations that are probably based on hundreds of studies with conflicting results and boil it down into something like no screen time for children under 18 months and no more than one hour a day for children ages two to five. How does that work? I guess starting at the beginning, how do you decide what studies to include? Dr. Dreyer: 00:04:06 Well, I think even before we decide what studies to include, there is the question of what topics should we have like policies or recommendations on. I think we choose topics based on what we think are the important issues for both pediatricians and practice where they're dealing with issues and so we hear from them and also what factors or issues are very important to parents. Then we look to see if there is enough evidence for us to actually make a recommendation, not every aspect of childcare, etc. is enough evidence for us to feel confident that we are making a recommendation that's based on it. So having said that, for each topic, we do a literature search through the medical and psychological and educational literature and we gather all the studies that exist there, the authors of each policy, review all those studies and throw out some of those studies because they're poorly designed, but include all the studies that are well designed from the research perspective so that we can be sure that their findings are useful. Dr. Dreyer: 00:05:31 As you said, sometimes these studies are conflicting and also sometimes we don't have complete information and we have to use whatever information we have to make a recommendation. I mean we don't choose studies to include, we review all the studies on a topic. So for example, screen time, we reviewed all the stu

My guest on today’s episode in the Sharing Your Parenting Mojo series is Dovilė Šafranauskė, who joins us from Lithuania. Dovilė has discovered respectful parenting and her husband is on board, but many of the central tenets of RIE go very much against how children are raised in Lithuanian culture. Dovilė wonders how she can work with her parents – who look after her children regularly – to help them feel more comfortable with RIE, as well as what to do with Aunty Mavis whom her toddler twins see a couple of times a year and who insists on a kiss as a greeting.   Dovilė is also a sensitive sleep coach with focus on following natural baby sleep paterns, advocating for gentle sleep interventions and finding tairored solutions that fit best with the needs of the whole family. Her business is called Miego Pelytes, which means Sleep Mice in Lithuanian, and refers to her twin daughters. Click here to learn about Sleep Mice   Parenting Membership If parenting feels really hard, and it seems like you’ve read all the books and you’ve asked for advice in free communities and you’re tired of having to weed through all the stuff that isn’t aligned with your values to get to the few good nuggets, then the Parenting Membership will help you out.   The Parenting Membership is now open for immediate enrollment. Sign up now!        

Today’s episode pulls together a lot of threads from previous shows, and will also give you some really concrete new tools using what’s called Nonviolent Communication to support you in your parenting. It’s not like these are concepts that we’ve never discussed before, but sometimes hearing them in a different framework can be the key to making them ‘click’ for you. Our guest Christine King has been teaching these techniques to college students, teachers, and parents for over 17 years.   And I’m releasing this particular interview today because these tools are ones we’re learning how to use in the free online workshop. In the workshop we’re going to spend a couple of weeks learning why our children trigger us so much and how to stop being triggered, and how we can move beyond the power struggles we get caught up in with our children so we can have the kind of relationship with them where their true needs as people are respected and met – and so are ours.   Parenting Membership If parenting feels really hard, and it seems like you’ve read all the books and you’ve asked for advice in free communities and you’re tired of having to weed through all the stuff that isn’t aligned with your values to get to the few good nuggets, then the Parenting Membership will help you out.   The Parenting Membership is now open for immediate enrollment. Sign up now!       Things we discussed in the show: We now have feelings and needs lists available to support you in using the tools described in this episode! Click here to access the list of feelings Click here to access the list of needs Christine’s game for kids can be found here Videos of Christine’s giraffe and jackal puppet shows are here Inbal Kashtan’s book Parenting From Your Heart The No-Fault Zone game Marshall Rosenberg’s book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life   References: Baesler, E.J., & Lauricella, S. (2014). Teach peace: Assessing instruction of the nonviolent communication and peace course. Journal of Peace Education 11(1), 46-63. Juncadella, C.M. (October 2013). What is the impact of the application of the Nonviolent Communication model on the development of empathy? Overview of research and outcomes. Unpublished Master’s Thesis. University of Sheffield. Retrieved from http://www.cnvc.org/sites/default/files/NVC_Research_Files/Carme_Mampel_Juncadella.pdf Kashtan, I. (2005). Parenting from your heart: Sharing the gifts of compassion, connection, and choice. Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press. Marlow, E., Nyamathi, A., Grajeda, W.T., Bailey, N., Weber, A., & Younger, J. (2012). Nonviolent communication training and empathy in male parolees. Journal of Correctional health Care 18(1), 8-19. Rose, M.B. (2003). The heart of parenting: Nonviolent Communication in action. PuddleDancer Press. Retrieved from https://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/pdf_files/parenting_communication_mrose.pdf Rosenberg, M.B. (2005). Raising children compassionately: Parenting the Nonviolent Communication way. Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press. Rosenberg, M.B. (2015). Nonviolent Communication (3rd Ed). Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press. Suarez, A., Lee, D.Y., Rowe, C., Gomez, A.A., Murowchick, E., & Linn, P.L. (2014). Freedom project: Nonviolent communication and mindfulness training in prison. SAGE open January-March 2014, 1-10.

Today we talk with listener Seanna Mallon about her struggles to be mindful when responding to her two spirited young sons (and I can confirm from direct experience that they are indeed spirited – we actually had to re-record the episode after we simply couldn’t continue the first interview due to her children’s continual interruptions!).   I share some basic tools for staying calm in difficult moments; for a deeper dive on this topic, do join the Tame Your Triggers workshop! Enrollment is now open.   We’ll help you to: Understand the real causes of your triggered feelings, and begin to heal the hurts that cause themUse new tools like the ones Katie describes to find ways to meet both her and her children’s needsEffectively repair with your children on the fewer instances when you are still triggered   It’s a 10-week workshop with one module delivered every week, an amazing community of like-minded parents, a match with an AccountaBuddy to help you complete the workshop, and mini-mindfulness practices to re-ground yourself repeatedly during your days, so you’re less reactive and more able to collaborate with your children.   Click the image below to learn more.     Parenting Membership If parenting feels really hard, and it seems like you’ve read all the books and you’ve asked for advice in free communities and you’re tired of having to weed through all the stuff that isn’t aligned with your values to get to the few good nuggets, then the Parenting Membership will help you out.   The Parenting Membership is now open for immediate enrollment. Sign up now!      

This episode is part of a series on understanding the intersection of race, privilege, and parenting. Click here to view all the items in this series.   We’ve done a LOT of episodes specifically for White parents by now: White privilege in parenting: What it is and what to do about itWhite privilege in schoolsTalking with children about raceTeaching children about topics like slavery and the Civil Rights MovementDo I have privilege?   In this episode we turn the tables: listener Dr. Elisa Celis joins me to interview Dr. Ciara Smalls Glover, whose work focuses on building the cultural strengths of youth of non-dominant cultures and their families. We discuss the ways that culture is transferred to children through parenting, how parents of non-dominant cultures can teach their children about race and racism, and how to balance this with messages of racial pride.   The Parenting Membership is now open for immediate enrollment. Sign up now!       Click the button on the right with the microphone on it to leave me a voicemail for the 100th episode!>>>   References Anderson, R.E., Hussain, S.B., Wilson, M.N., Shaw, D.S., Dishion, T.J., & Williams, J.L. (2015). Pathways to pain: Racial discrimination and relations between parental functioning and child psychosocial well-being. Journal of Back Psychology 41(6), 491-512. Brody, G.H., Chen, Y-F, Kogan S.M., Murray, V.M., Logan, P., & Luo, Z. (2008). Linking perceived discrimination to longitudinal changes in African American mothers’ parenting practices. Journal of Marriage and Family 70(2), 319-331. Coard, S.I., Wallace, S.A., Stevenson Jr., H.C., & Brotman, L.M. (2004). Towards culturally relevant preventive interventions: The consideration of racial socialization in parent training with African American families. Journal of Child and Family Studies 13(3), 277-293. Grills, C., Cooke, D., Douglas, J., Subica, A., Villanueva, S., & Hudson, B. (2016). Culture, racial socialization, and positive African American Youth Development. Journal of Blak Psychology 42(4), 343-373. Harris-Britt, A., Valrie, C.R., & Kurtz-Costes, B. (2007). Perceived racial discrimination and self-esteem in African American youth: Racial socialization as a protective factor. Journal of Research on Adolescence 1794), 669-682. Lesane-Brown, C.L., A review of race socialization within Black families. Developmental review 26, 400-426. Scottham, K.M., & Smalls, C.P. (2009). Unpacking racial socialization: Considering female African American primary caregivers’ racial identity. Journal of Marriage and Family 71(4), 807-818. Smalls, C. (2009). African American adolescent engagement in the classroom and beyond: The roles of mother’s racial socialization and democratic-involved parenting. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 38(2), 204-213. Smalls-Glover, C., Williams, J.L., Zuckerman, A., & Thomas, D. (2013). Parental socialization in response to racism: Implications for family health. In M.S. Harris (Ed.), African American perspectives: Family dynamics, health care issues, and the role of ethnic identity. New York, NY: Nova. Williams, J.L., & Smalls-Glover, C. (2013). Content and attributions of caregiver racial socialization as predictors of African American adolescents’ private racial regard. Journal of Black Psychology 40(1), 69-80.

This episode began out of a query that I see repeated endlessly in online parenting groups: “My child has a really strong preference for me. They get on great with the other parent (usually the father, in a heterosexual relationship) when I’m not around, but when I’m there it’s all “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” This is destroying my partner; how can we get through this stage?”   So that’s where I began the research on this question, and it led me down quite a rabbit hole – I’d never thought too much about whether mothers and fathers fulfill unique roles in a child’s development and while it isn’t necessarily as prescriptive as “the mother provides… and the father provides… ,” in many families these roles do occur and this helps to explain why children prefer one parent over another. (we also touch on how this plays out in families where both parents are of the same gender).   My guest for this episode is Dr. Diana Coyl-Shepheard, Professor at California State University Chico, whose research focuses on children’s social and emotional development and relationships with their fathers.   Parenting Membership If parenting feels really hard, and it seems like you’ve read all the books and you’ve asked for advice in free communities and you’re tired of having to weed through all the stuff that isn’t aligned with your values to get to the few good nuggets, then the Parenting Membership will help you out.   The Parenting Membership is now open for immediate enrollment. Sign up now!       Click the “Send Voicemail” button on the right >>> to record your message for the 100th episode: it can be a question, a comment, or anything else you like!   Read Full Transcript (Introduction added after the episode was recorded and transcribed): Before we get started with today’s episode on the unique role of fathers in children’s development, as well as why children prefer one parent over another, I wanted to let you know about three super cool things that I’m working on you. The first is about my membership group, which is called Finding Your Parenting Mojo. I don’t mention the group a lot on the show because I don’t like over-selling, but a listener who was in the group the last time I opened it to new members told me she actually didn’t know I had a membership group, so I’m going to tell you a bit more about it this time around! The group is for parents who are on board with the ideas you hear about on the podcast based in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting, but struggle to put them into practice in real life. So if you find yourself nodding along and saying yep; I agree with the whole ‘no rewards and punishments’ thing and I’m on board with working with my child to solve the problems we have, and I really want to relax a bit around my child’s eating, but on the other hand you’re thinking: but rewarding with story time is the only way I can get my child to brush their flipping teeth, and how do I even get started with working with my child to solve problems? And if I ever did relax around my child’s eating then all they would eat is goldfish and gummy bears, then the group is for you. We spend a month digging into each issue that parents face – from tantrums to figuring out your goals as a parent and for your child to getting on the same page as your partner (and knowing when it’s OK to have different approaches!)…raising healthy eaters to navigating screen time and supporting sibling relationships; we cover it all. I’ll open the group to new members in July, and it closes at the end of July and on August 1st we start digging into our first topic, which is reducing the number of tantrums you’re experiencing. The cost for the group is $39/month this time around which is locked in for as long as you’re a member - I increased the price from last time, and I may increase it again next time the group reopens. Or if you sign up before July 18th, you can pay for 10 months and get the last two months of the year free. If you’d like to learn more about joining the membership group you can do that at yourparentingmojo.com/membership – the doors will open on July 1st. So that’s the deal with the group. The second cool thing I’m working on is something to give you a taste of what it will be like to be in the group. I’ve heard a lot of parents talking about how their children’s behavior really “triggers” them, and I was going to do a podcast episode on this and then I realized that this is especially one of those topics that you can’t just listen to and expect a change to happen; but if you’re willing to do a bit of work, that you can see enormous payoffs. So I thought OK; how can I really make the greatest impact possible with this work? And I decided to put together a nine-day online workshop to walk you through it. So if you go to yourparentingmojo.com/tameyourtriggers and sign up, staring on July 8th you’ll receive an email from me on each of the next nine week days th

This episode is part of a series on understanding the intersection of race, privilege, and parenting. Click here to view all the items in this series. Each time I think I’m done with this series on the intersection of race and parenting, another great topic pops up! Listener Ann reached out to me after she heard the beginning of the series to let me know about her own journey of learning about her White privilege. Ann and her husband were a ‘normal’ White couple who were vaguely aware of some of the things they could do to help others (Ann works at a nonprofit) and saw politics as an interesting hobby. Then they adopted a Black daughter and had a (surprise!) biological daughter within a few months, and Ann found that she needed to learn about her privilege – and quickly. She’s had to learn about things like the features of a ‘high quality’ daycare for both of her daughters, how to keep them safe, and we get some feedback from Dr. Renee Engeln about how to help Black girls to see and be confident in their beauty. Ann is openly not an expert on this topic, and does not speak for adoptive Black children, or even for all White adopting parents. But she finds herself far further along this journey of discovering her privilege than the vast majority of us – myself included, until I began researching this series of episodes. Read Full Transcript Jen: 01:24 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. When I started this series of episodes on the Intersection of Race and Parenting, I had no idea it was going to go on for so long. I had initially planned to do the episodes on White Privilege and Parenting with Dr. Margaret Hagerman and White Privilege in Schools with Dr. Allison Roda and then How To Talk About Race with Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. After the conversation with Dr. Tatum, I realized that we hadn’t talked a lot about what we should teach about topics like slavery and the Civil Rights Movement, and so we went on to cover that with Dr. John Bickford and then I got to chatting via email with Ann Kane who is a listener and who’s our guest today. And so before I tell you about Ann, I just wanted to tell you a snippet about my own journey toward learning about my privilege. Jen: 02:06 I was actually listening to an episode of The How To Get Away With Parenting podcast, which is published by my now friend, Malaika Dower. And in it Malaika made a comment about how it might not be safe for a Black toddler to have a tantrum in a store. And the implication was because the White parents would potentially find this threatening in some way. And if you’d ask me before that moment whether I had White privilege as a parent, I would have said, I really don’t think so because I’m really not sure I could have named a single way in which I experienced this. So uncovering my privilege has been a very deliberate exercise for me that’s taken a lot of hard work because the point of privilege is you don’t really see it. It’s there to protect you from having to see it. Jen: 02:48 But our guest Ann has been forced to confront her privilege in a completely different way. So Ann who is White, spent 10 years working in the field with Doctors Without Borders and she left to work in Program Finance for a nonprofit in New York City so that she and her White husband could raise a family and she adopted a daughter, Alice from the foster care system. Alice was 8 days old at the time and is now just over two and she is Black. And then Ann and her husband had a surprise baby named Audrey who is almost two and is White. So when Ann and I started emailing about this, she told me, “Raising Alice in a society that still has so much structural racism is my biggest parenting worry. I’m so afraid that my White privilege is going to harm her. There’s so much I’m unaware of. And as a White person, I don’t feel I can prepare her for all she’ll face.” Jen: 03:35 That’s when I knew I had to talk with Ann in an episode, because while she isn’t and doesn’t claim to be an expert on race or racism or raising a Black child, she’s been forced to confront her own privilege as a White person and as a White parent to a much greater extent than I have. And then I think probably many of my listeners have as well. So my goal for today is that perhaps you hear something in Ann’s journey that resonates with privilege you didn’t know you had, and maybe you’ll take an action to lift somebody else up who has less privilege than you. So with all that said, welcome Ann. Ann: 04:08 Thank you. Hi Jen. Jen: 04:09 Hi. Welcome to the backside of the microphone. Ann: 04:12 Okay. Jen: 04:13 So, we started each episode in this series with both me and my guests stating our privileges. And so you have heard this before and some of the listeners as well. So I’m just going to state mine really quickly. My Whiteness, my economic status in the upper middle class, heterosexuality, able-bodiedness, my education, and my presence on the land of the Chochenyo Ohlone native Americans

This episode comes to us courtesy of my friend Jess, whose daughter has Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) and who is on a mission to make sure that as many parents as possible learn about it. She says that every time she describes it to a parent they realize that they know someone who exhibits behavior that looks like SPD that warrants following up. I have to say that I was highly ambivalent about doing this episode, because I don’t usually deal with topics that result in medical diagnoses as I’m (obviously) not a doctor. But the more I looked into this the more I realized that helping parents to understand the mess of research on this topic is exactly the kind of thing that I usually do on this show, and that an episode on this topic could probably be useful to a number of you. And here’s the love letter to John McPhee that I mention in the episode     Read Full Transcript Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today’s episode on Sensory Processing Disorder comes to you courtesy of my friend Jess, and I’m going to tell you a little about Jess and her daughter as a way to introduce the topic. Jess told me that her daughter likely had a mini-stroke either in utero or during birth that affected the left side of her body, and Jess figured this out around the time her daughter was 10 months old. So her daughter started physical therapy for that, but Jess still felt as though something wasn’t quite right, and while she already had a pediatrician, physical therapist, and neurologist, six months or so of Jess being (in her words) “a crazy parent,” along with the support of her mother who happens to be a pediatric physical therapist, to convince her daughter’s support team that something wasn’t right, and finally her daughter was evaluated for sensory processing disorder. Her daughter received occupational therapy treatment and is now doing very well. Jess realized that if she hadn’t been especially vocal, and if she hadn’t had her own mother’s expert support, then it’s possible that her daughter’s issues would have gone undiagnosed. Jess told me she has started talking with anyone who will listen about this topic and whenever she mentions it a lightbulb goes off with whomever she is talking with about either a child in their lie or a friend of a friend who is having similar issues, so she asked me to do an episode on it so more people could learn about it. Now I have to say that as much as I love Jess I did hesitate before taking this on. I don’t usually deal with topics that result in medical diagnoses because I’m obviously not a doctor or a psychiatrist. But the more I looked into this the more I realized that helping parents to understand the mess of research on this topic is exactly the kind of thing that I usually do on this show, and that an episode on this topic could probably be useful to a number of you. So, to reiterate, I am not a doctor or a psychiatrist, and this episode is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. In fact, for reasons we’ll get into in the episode, it’s actually kind of difficult for a doctor to diagnose as well. So we’ll talk about diagnoses, and about the efficacy of treatment for SPD, and finally about how to chart a path forward if you suspect that your child may have difficulties processing sensory information. So let’s get into it! For those of you who haven’t heard of it before, what is sensory processing disorder, and where did it come from? The research in this field was pioneered by Dr. A. Jean Ayres, who was an occupational therapist active from the 1960s to the 1980s. Dr. Ayres’ classic book is called Sensory Integration and the Child, and was re-released in 2005 in a 25th anniversary edition. In the book, Dr. Ayres describes sensory integration, which is the organization of our senses, which give us information about the physical conditions of our body and the environment around us. She says that the brain has to organize all of these sensations if a person is to move and learn and behave in a productive way – for example, by making your eyes, nose, mouth, skin, muscles, and joints work together to peel and eat an orange, and that an adaptive response to a sensory experience is a purposeful and goal-directed one. When we have an adaptive response we master a challenge and learn something new. Until the child is about 7, they are primarily a sensory processing machine – they sense things and respond, without having many abstract thoughts and ideas. Dr. Ayres says that the brain’s mental and social functions in the later years are based on this foundation of sensorimotor processes, and if sensorimotor processes are well organized in the first 7 years, the child will have an easier time learning mental and social skills later on. Dr. Ayres died in 1989, and Dr. Lucy Jane Miller has carried the flag on this work. Dr. Miller is the director of the Sensory Therapies and Research Center in Denver, Colorado, and has written her own b

In this second episode of Sharing Your Parenting Mojo we talk with Rose, who is American but lives in Germany, about discussing math with girls – as well as with managing her daughter’s sugar intake. Here’s Rose’s blog, where she discusses what she thought of my Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue episode. If you’d like to be interviewed for Sharing Your Parenting Mojo, please complete the form located here and I’ll be in touch if there’s a fit…

This episode is part of a series on understanding the intersection of race, privilege, and parenting. Click here to view all the items in this series. In this episode we continue our series on the intersection of race and parenting, which we started with Dr. Margaret Hagerman on the topic of White privilege in parenting; then we covered White privilege in schools with Dr. Allison Roda and what parents can do to overcome structural racism as well as talk with their children about race with Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. Today we’re continuing the series by learning from Dr. John Bickford about how to actually have a conversation with our child on a topic as complex and difficult as slavery or the Civil Rights Movement, using both primary sources and children’s ‘trade’ books. During the episode you’ll hear Dr. Bickford and I hatch an idea to develop a resource guide for parents on exactly what sources and books to use to make sure you’re discussing the right issues within these topics: download the guide below!   References: Bauer, M.D. (2009). Martin Luther King, Jr. New York, NY: Scholastic. Bickford, J.H., & Rich, C.W. (2014). Examining the representation of slavery within children’s literature. Social Studies Research and Practice 9(1), 66-94. Bickford, J.H., & Rich, C.W. (2015). The historical representation of Thanksgiving within primary- and intermediate-level children’s literature. Journal of Children’s Literature 41(1), 5-21. Bickford, J.H. (2015). Assessing and addressing historical misrepresentations within children’s literature about the Civil Rights Movement. The History Teacher 48(4), 693-736. Bickford, J.H., & Schuette, L.N. (2016). Trade books’ historical representation of the Black Freedom Movement, slavery through civil rights. Journal of Children’s Literature 42(1), 20-43. Bickford, J. (2018). Primary elementary students’ historical literacy, thinking, and argumentation about Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan. The History Teacher 51(2), 269-292. Marzollo, J., & Pinkney, J.B. (1993). Happy Birthday Martin Luther King. New York, NY: Scholastic. Southern Poverty Law Center (2019). Anti-racism activity: ‘The Sneetches.’ Author. Retrieved from https://www.tolerance.org/classroom-resources/tolerance-lessons/antiracism-activity-the-sneetches Southern Poverty Law Center (2019). Classroom simulations: Proceed with caution. Author. Retrieved from https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/spring-2008/classroom-simulations-proceed-with-caution Click below to download FREE guides to teaching children about slavery and the civil rights movement Get the FREE Guide!   Read Full Transcript Jen: 00:01:44 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Regular listeners will recall that we've been talking about the Intersection of Race and Parenting for a while now. We opened by talking with Dr. Margaret Hagerman on the topic of White Privilege and Parenting. And then we heard from Dr. Allison Roda on White Privilege in Schools. In our third episode, one of my listeners, Dr. Kim Rybacki and I interviewed Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. And we tried really hard to cover a lot of ground on both what parents can do to overcome structural racism and on how to talk with our children about race. But I was very cognizant of the stones that we left unturned that I really wish we had time to address. Now, I reached out to today's guest because I wanted to better understand his work on how historical figures are depicted in children's literature. And he responded, I should be on your show. Jen: 00:02:31 And after I read his papers, I said, yes, you should. So, Dr. John Bickford is here with us today. I just wanted to mention though that I'm rerecording this introduction because you'll hear in the conversation that we formulated an idea to develop some resources to help parents talk with their children about difficult topics like slavery and the Civil Rights Movement. And we actually went ahead and did that. So, each one is a short PDF that walks you through primary sources were these exist on each topic as well as a collection of children's books. You’ll hear Dr. Bickford refer to these as trade books and if it's been awhile since you studied history, then primary sources or things like photographs and posters of slave auctions and audio recordings of former slaves, which you might not normally consider as things to share with young children. Jen: 00:03:13 But which Dr. Bickford has actually done very successfully. So, the thing that makes these resources unique is that they use frameworks developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center for teaching young children about these topics. So, it's not just a random collection of books and pictures and videos that we thought were interesting, but together they address what scholars believe to be the most important ideas on each topic. Things like the fact that enslaved people brought rich cultures and traditions with them that continue today and that the Civil Rights

Welcome to the first episode in a new series that I’m calling Sharing Your Parenting Mojo, where I interview listeners about what they’ve learned from the show as well as the parenting challenges they’re facing. Today we talk with Ontario, Canada-based listener Jess Barnes, a registered social worker and parent of almost-two about a mindfulness tool that can help us to stay calm when our children push our buttons.   If you’d like to be interviewed for Sharing Your Parenting Mojo, please complete the form located here and I’ll be in touch if there’s a fit…   Taming Your Triggers If you need help with your own big feelings about your child’s behavior, register for the Taming Your Triggers workshop! We’ll help you to: Understand the real causes of your triggered feelings, and begin to heal the hurts that cause themUse new tools like the ones Katie describes to find ways to meet both her and her children’s needsEffectively repair with your children on the fewer instances when you are still triggered   Click the banner to learn more!  

The way we set limits has such profound implications for our parenting: it’s the difference between parenting in a constant state of anxiety, and being truly calm and confident that you’re making the right decisions as you move through your day.   If we set ineffective limits, our child never knows where we stand. They push and push and push because they know we will allow it, then finally we blow up because they pushed us TOO FAR and they end up in tears (or angry) and we end up angry (or in tears, or both).   But doesn’t setting limits mean being “harsh” or “punitive”? Not at all! When we set the right limits (by which I mean the right limits for your family), you can hold those limits effectively and the testing behavior will diminish dramatically.   The result? More harmony at home. Less uncertainty for you. More confidence for your child. Give it a try!   Setting Loving (&Effective!) Limits Workshop If you need more support in setting limits that your child will respect (and using far fewer of them than you might ever have thought possible – while still having your boundaries respected!), I hope you’ll join the Setting Loving (& Effective!) workshop.   Click the banner to learn more.     Other episodes mentioned: Why storytelling is so important for our childrenShould we just Go Ahead and Heap Rewards on our Child?   References Andreadakis, E., Joussemet, M., & Mageau, G.A. (2018). How to support toddlers’ autonomy: Socialization practices reported by parents. Early Education and Development 1-18. Denby, R.W., & Alford, K.A. (1996). Understanding African American discipline styles: Suggestions for effective social work intervention. Journal of Multicultural Social Work 4(3), 81-98. Full article available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234770892_Understanding_African_American_Discipline_Styles_Suggestions_for_Effective_Social_Work_Intervention Gough, J.L. (2006). Make mild moments memorable: Add a little arousal. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10(8), 345-347. Full article available at http://aclab.human.cornell.edu/publications/papers/McGaugh_TiCS06.pdf Helwig, C.C., To, S., Wang, Q., Liu, C., & Yang, S. (2014). Judgements and reasoning about parental discipline involving induction and psychological control in China and Canada. Child Development 85(3), 1150-1167. Hoffman, M.L. (1960). Power assertion by the parent and its impact on the child. Child Development 31(1), 129-143 Joussemet, M., Koestner, R., Lekes, N., & Houlfort, N. (2004). Introducing uninteresting tasks to children: A comparison of the effects of rewards and autonomy support. Journal of Personality 72(1), 139-166. Joussemet, M., Landry, R., & Koestner, R. (2008). A self-determination theory perspective on parenting. Canadian Psychology 49(3), 194-200 Joussemet, M., Mageau, G.A., & Koestner, R. (2014). Promoting optimal parenting and children’s mental health: A preliminary evaluation of the how-to parenting program. Journal of Child and Family Studies 23(6), 949-964. Joussemet, M., Mageau, G.A., Larose, M-P, Briand, M., & Vitaro, F. (2018). How to talk so kids will listen & listen so kids will talk: A randomized controlled trial evaluating the efficacy of the how-to parenting program on children’s mental health compared to a wait-list control group. BMC Pediatrics 18, 257- Kochanska, G., & Aksan, N. (1995). Mother-child mutually positive affect, the quality of child compliance to requests and prohibitions, and maternal control as correlates of early internalization. Child Development 66(1), 236-254. Kuczynski, L., & Kochanska, G. (1990). Development of children’s noncompliance strategies from toddlerhood to age 5. Developmental Psychology 26(3), 398-408. Lepper, M.L. (1983). Social-control processes and the internalization of social values: An attributional perspective. In E.T. Higgins, D.N. Ruble, & W.W. Hartup (Eds.), Social cognition and social development (p.294-330). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Mageau, G.A., Lessard, J., Carpentier, J., Robichaud, J-M, Joussemet, M., & Koestner, R. (2018). Effectiveness and acceptability beliefs regarding logical consequences and mild punishments. Rohner, R.P., & Pettengill, S.M. (1985). Perceived parental acceptance-rejection and parental control among Korean adolescents. Child Development 56, 524-528. Soenens, B., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2010). A theoretical upgrade of the concept of parental psychological control: Proposing new insights on the basis of self-determination theory. Developmental Review 30, 74-99.  

This episode is part of a series on understanding the intersection of race, privilege, and parenting. Click here to view all the items in this series. We’ve laid a lot of groundwork on topics related to race by now: we learned about White privilege in parenting, and White privilege in schools, and even how parents can use sports to give their children advantages in school and in life. Today my listener Dr. Kim Rybacki and I interview a giant in the field: Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, author of the now-classic book (recently released in a 20th anniversary edition!) Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria: And Other Conversations About Race. We begin by assessing what is White parents’ responsibility to help dismantle structural racism, and then learn how to discuss race and racism with our children. And in the next episode in this series I’ll have some really in-depth resources to support you in having these conversations with your own children. Dr. Tatum was featured in a short piece with Lester Holt on how to talk with children about racial injustice that you might also find helpful - she describes ways you can answer their questions honestly and fully in an age-appropriate way. You can find a link to the interview on her website here.   References Bonilla-Silva, E., (2004). From bi-racial to tri-racial: Towards a new system of racial stratification in the USA. Ethnic and Racial Studies 27(6), 931-950. Cheney-Rice, Z. (2018, November 11). Bernie Sanders and the lies we tell White voters. New York Intelligencer. Retrieved from http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/bernie-sanders-and-the-lies-we-tell-white-voters.html Derman-Sparks, L., & Olsen, J. (2009). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. National Association for the Education of Young Children. Available at https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/books/anti-bias-education Hagerman, M. (2018). White Kids: Growing up with privilege in a racially divided America. New York, NY: New York University Press. Helms, J. E. (Ed.). (1990). Contributions in Afro-American and African studies, No. 129. Black and White racial identity: Theory, research, and practice. New York, NY, England: Greenwood Press. King, M.L. (2010). Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community? Boston, MA: Beacon. Kivel, P. (2017). Uprooting racism: How White people can work for racial justice (4th Ed.). Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society. Miller, S. (2017, December 8). Reading race: Proactive conversations with young children. Raising Race-Conscious Children. Retrieved from http://www.raceconscious.org/2017/12/explicitlanguageracebooks/ Roda, A. (2015). Inequality in gifted and talented programs: Parental choices about status, school opportunity, and second-generation segregation. London, U.K.: Palgrave MacMillan. Stalvey, L.M. (1989). The education of a WASP. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. Sullivan, S. (2014). Good White people: The problem with middle-class White anti-racism. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Tatum, B.D. (2017). Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?. New York, NY: Basic. Van Ausdale, D.V. & Feagin, J.R. (2001). The first R: How children learn race and racism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"]   Jen: 01:25 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We have a very special episode lined up for today and I’m recording this introduction separately, so as not to take time away from the interview. If you’re a regular listener, you might have heard my episodes on White Privilege and Parenting and also White Privilege in Schools in which we looked at some of the structural racism that’s present in our society that we might not have recognized until now, especially if we’re White. I’d also like to direct you back to the very beginning of the show because in episode 6, which was called “Wait, is my toddler racist?” We discovered how implicit bias works, how it’s often present even in very young children and how just not talking with children about color or what is known as the colorblind approach is one of the more effective ways to raise a child who experiences racial prejudice. Jen: 02:10 Having been completely immersed in the literature on this topic for the last couple of months, I’m also going to adjust my terminology to be more in line with the language that my guest uses. Racial prejudice describes a person’s attitude while racism or structural racism is the system that confers advantages on White people and disadvantages on people who aren’t White by reinforcing ideas about White superiority. If you haven’t already listened to these previous episodes then I would strongly encourage you to do so as a lot of the ideas and language we’ll use today was established in these episodes and we won’t spend a lot of time laying groundwork today so we can maximize our time on the really d

Individual sports or competitive? Recreational or organized? Everyone gets a trophy or just the winners? And why do sports in the first place? Granted there are some physical benefits, but don’t we also hope that our children will learn some kind of lessons about persistence and team work that will stand them in good stead in the future? In this interview with Dr. Hilary Levy Friedman we discuss her book Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture, the advantages that sports can confer on children (which might not be the ones you expect!), as well as what children themselves think about these issues. Read Full Transcript Jen: 01:23 Hello and welcome to today's episode of Your Parenting Mojo podcast, and today's episode actually comes to us courtesy of a question from my husband who said “You should really do an episode on the benefits of sports for children.” And I said, sure and I said about researching it and I actually stumbled on Dr. Hilary Levey Friedman’s book Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture, and I really got more than I bargained for with that book. Dr. Friedman has studied not just the advantages and drawbacks associated with participation in sport as an activity, but also much broader sociological issues like how participation in sports helped children to increase what she calls Competitive Kid Capital and can actually impact the child's academic and lifelong success. So, Dr. Friedman received her Bachelor's Degree from Harvard and Master’s in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University. She's currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Education at Brown University and is the mother of a preschooler and a first grader. Welcome Dr. Friedman. Dr. Friedman: 02:24 Thanks for having me. Jen: 02:25 You're right there in the thick of it with us. Dr. Friedman: 02:27 Yes. Jen: 02:29 So, I want to kind of start at the beginning or what seems like the beginning to me here because decades ago it seems as though it was far more common for children to engage in really unstructured outdoor playtime rather than organized sports. I'm curious as to your thoughts on what has shifted here and what do you think children are missing out by not having as much of this unstructured outdoor play? Dr. Friedman: 02:51 Well, it depends what time we're talking about. I mean if we’re talking about 200 years ago, I mean kids were working in the fields and 50 years after that, they were working in factories. So about a hundred years ago, 1918, we're seeing the formation of kids' athletic leagues in particular and also some other organized activities, but it's really more of like a popular myth or a misconception that kids use to spend all this time playing and having free time. The 1950s, which is that time we sort of pulled up is this Utopian time of kids playing in the streets and playing stickball and baseball and all of that is more the anomaly rather than the norm. So, today it is absolutely true that kids spend so much more time, especially, it depends on what age exactly we're talking about, but they spend a lot of time in organized play, not just in organized sports, but we just have to think about the ways in which that took a different shape historically in American childhood. Jen: 03:56 Yeah. Yeah. So, it's less that they were always able to engage in this unstructured play and whether that was sort of a phenomenon of its time just like the structured play as a phenomenon of its time today. Dr. Friedman: 04:07 Yes. Jen: 04:08 Do you think there are unique benefits associated with that unstructured time that maybe children are not able to realize today through the structured play that happens? Dr. Friedman: 04:17 Again, I think it depends on the age group we're talking about, so I'll limit it to elementary school aged kids just because that's the age group that Playing to Win focuses upon. So, I think certainly kids are working out all kinds of ideas, both intellectual but also social and moral when they play together and come up with their own games. Now, I don't think that having organized play is mutually exclusive to that either. So, I'll just give you one example in particular, part of Playing to Win is also about chess, not just about sports. And so I remember being at a chess summer camp for a few weeks and observing there and meeting families and the kids would play chess and then there'd be a recess time and then they'd play a little bit more chess and then have lunch and then have like a much longer period of recess and go out to a playground. And they came up with all these games that they invented on the playground and with pool noodles even though there wasn't a pool nearby and they had rules. It was very elaborate. So yes, they were spending time unstructured play as well, but they also had this space to be creative, workout rules, work together. So, I think it is possible for both of those things to coexist and both

This episode is part of a series on understanding the intersection of race, privilege, and parenting. Click here to view all the items in this series. Public schools are open to all children, no matter what their race, so where’s the privilege in schools? In this episode we’ll learn more about how even (and perhaps especially) well-meaning liberal White parents perpetuate inequalities in schools which disadvantage children from non-dominant cultures. We’ll cover the way that purportedly ‘scientific’ standardized tests perpetuate inequality, ‘second generation segregation’ (which is still alive and well in schools), how White parents who want the best for their children end up disadvantaging others – and what are some steps we can take to move forward.   Dr. Allison Roda's book Inequality in gifted and talented programs: Parental choices about status, school opportunity, and second-generation segregation - Affiliate link   References Antonio, A., Chang, M.J., Hakuta, K., Kenny, D.A., Levin, S., & Milem, J.F. (2004). Effects of racial diversity on complex thinking in college students. Psychological Science 15(8), 507-510. DOI 10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00710.x Bifulco, R., Cobb, C., & Bel, C. (2009). Can interdistrict choice boost student achievement? The case of Connecticut’s interdistrict magnet school program. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 31(4), 323-345. Brantlinger, E., Majd-Jabbari, M., & Guskin, S.L. (1996). Self-interest and liberal educational discourse: How ideology works for middle-class mothers. American Educational Research Journal 33(3), 571-597. Conway-Turner, J. (2016). Does diversity matter? The impact of school racial composition on the academic achievement of elementary school students in an ethnically diverse low-income sample (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from http://mars.gmu.edu/jspui/bitstream/handle/1920/10405/ConwayTurner_gmu_0883E_11159.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Gamoran, A., Barfels, S., & Collares, A.C. (2016). Does racial isolation in school lead to long-term disadvantages? Labor market consequences of high school racial composition. American Journal of Sociology 121(4), 1116-1167. Holme, J.J. (2002). Buying homes, buying schools: School choice and the social construction of school quality. Harvard Educational Review 72(2), 177-205. Knoester, M., & Au, W. (2014). Standardized testing and school segregation: Like tinder for fire? Race Ethnicity and Education 20(1), 1-14. Mickelson, R.A. (2001). Subverting Swann: First- and second-generation segregation in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools. American Educational Research Journal 38(2), 215-252 National Center for Education Statistics (2017) National Assessment of Educational Progress (Reading and Math results). Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ Nava, J. (2017, August 28). Do parents value school diversity? The PDK poll offers insights. Learning First Alliance. Retrieved from https://learningfirst.org/blog/parents-attitudes-toward-school-diversity Posey-Maddox, L. (2014). When middle-class parents choose urban schools: Class, race, and the challenge of equity in public education. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Roda, A. (2018). School choice and the politics of parenthood: Exploring parent mobilization as a catalyst for the common good. Peabody Journal of Education 1-20. Roda, A. (2017). Parenting in the age of high-stakes testing: Gifted and talented admissions and the meaning of parenthood. Teachers College Record 119, 1-53. Roda, A. (2015). Inequality in gifted and talented programs: Parental choices about status, school opportunity, and second-generation segregation. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Roda, A., & Wells, A.S. (2013). School choice policies and racial segregation: Where White parents’ good intentions and privilege collide. American Journal of Education 119)2), 261-293. Sattin-Bajaj, C., & Roda, A. (2018). Opportunity hoarding in school choice contexts: The role of policy design in promoting middle-class parents’ exclusionary behaviors. Educational Policy 1-44. Smith, J.A. (2015, February 2). As parents get more choice, S.F. schools resegregate. San Francisco Public Press. Retrieved from https://sfpublicpress.org/news/2015-02/as-parents-get-more-choice-sf-schools-resegregate Trachtenberg, P., Roda, A., & Coughlan, R. (2016, December 12). Remedying school segregation: How New Jersey’s Morris School District chose to make diversity work. The Century Foundation. Retrieved from https://tcf.org/content/report/remedying-school-segregation/ Watson, J. (2018, November 26). Cindy Hyde-Smith’s experience is not an outlier: School segregation in America is still a troubling fact today. NBC News. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/cindy-hyde-smith-s-experience-not-outlier-school-segregation-america-n940361 Wells, A.S., Fox, L., & Cordodva-Cobo, D. (2016, February 9). How racially diverse schools and classrooms can b

“Is RIE backed by scientific research?” It’s a question that comes up every once in a while among parents who use the Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE) approach to raising their children, and then they all (virtually) look at each other kind of uneasily because no study has ever shown that children raised using RIE methods have any better outcomes than children who aren’t. Given how much I focus on scientific research, you would think that I would have determined my overall approach to parenting through extensive reading of the literature – but actually I discovered RIE even before I started looking at research and I latched onto it because parenting in a respectful way just felt right. I knew that love was necessary but not the only tool I would to discipline (used in its original sense, meaning “to teach”) my daughter about how to live in our family. I knew immediately that respect was the tool I sought. But it always niggled at me (and these other parents): Is RIE backed in any way by science? Naturally, I could find no expert who could speak to this. So I recruited the assistance of a fellow RIE-practicing parent to help us think through RIE’s basic principles, and whether (or not!) the research backs these up. If you’re new to RIE, you might want to listen to this introductory episode on What is RIE first, so you’ll have the background you need. I actually recorded this Science of RIE episode first so it does have a very brief introduction to RIE, but then I realized it really wasn’t sufficient so I recorded the extra episode. Have questions about RIE? Want to continue the conversation? Come on over to the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group and ask away, or join the Toasted RIE group which I help to moderate!     References Beatty, T., Stranger, C., & Beatty, N. (1984). “Seeing infants” with new eyes. NAEYC (Series) #852. DVD. Bonawitz, E., Shafto, P., Gweon, H., Goodman, N.D., Spelke, E., & Schultz, L. (2011). The double-edged sword of pedagogy: Instruction limits spontaneous exploration and discovery. Cognition 120(3), 322-330. Full article available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3369499/pdf/nihms378662.pdf Churchill, S.L., & Stoneman, Z. (2004). Correlates of family routines in Head Start families. Early Childhood Research & Practice 6(1). Full article available at: http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v6n1/churchill.html Cohen, N.J., Muir, E., Lojkasek, M., Muir, R., Parker, C.J., Barwick, M., & Brown, M. (1999) Watch, wait, and wonder: Testing the effectiveness of a new approach to mother-infant psychotherapy. Infant Mental Health Journal 20(4), 429-451. Cook, P.R. (2016). The pedagogy in the methodology of three early learning philosophies. In P.R. Cook (Ed.), Guide to early childhood education: Development – design – diversity (pp.23-50). Newcastle, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Fiese, B.H., Tomcho, T.J., Douglas, M., Josephs, K., Poltrock, S., & Baker, T. (2002). A review of 50 years of research on naturally occurring family routines and rituals: Cause for celebration? Journal of Family Psychology 16(4), 381-390. Fiese, B.H., Foley, K.P., & Spagnola, M. (2006). Routine and ritual elements in family mealtimes: Contexts for child well-being and family identity. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 111, 67-89. A. Gopnik, A.N. Meltzoff, & P.K. Kuhl (1999). The scientist in the crib: Minds, brains and how children learn. New York: Harper Collins. Also published as How babies think. London: The Bodley Head. Koestner, R., Ryan, R.M., Bernieri, F., & Holt, K. (1984). Setting limits on children’s behavior: the differential effects of controlling vs. informational styles on intrinsic motivation and creativity. Journal of Personality 52(3) 233-248 Levin, D.E., & Rosenquest, B. (2001). The increasing role of electronic toys in the lives of infants and toddlers: Should we be concerned? Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 2(2), 242-247. Mooney, C.G. (2010). Theories of attachment: An introduction to Bowlby, Ainsworth, Gerber, Brazelton, Kennell & Klaus. St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press. Owen, S., & Petire, S. (2006). “Observe more…do less’: The approaches of Magda Gerber to parent education. In L. Abbott & A. Langston (Eds.), Parents matter: Supporting the birth to three matters framework (pp.127-137). Maidenhead, U.K.: McGraw Hill. Parpal, M., & Maccoby, E. (1985) Maternal responsiveness and subsequent child compliance. Child Development 56, 1326-1334. Pikler, E. (1968). Some contributions to the study of the gross motor development of children. The Journal of Genetic Psychology 113, 27-39. Sahiner, N.C., & Bal, M.D. (2015). The effects of three different distraction methods on pain and anxiety in children. Journal of Child Health Care 1-9. Smith, P.B., & Pederson, D.R. (1988). Maternal sensitivity and patterns of infant-mother attachment. Child Development 59(4), 1097-1101. Sosa A.V. (2016). Association of t

This episode is part of a series on understanding the intersection of race, privilege, and parenting. Click here to view all the items in this series. This episode launches a series of conversations on the intersection of race and parenting. I spent a month wading around in the psychological literature on this topic and deciding how best to approach it, and eventually decided to split it into four topics. Today we’ll dig into White privilege in parenting through a conversation with Dr. Margaret Hagerman on her book White kids: Growing up with privilege in a racially divided America. For those of us who are White, White privilege can be an incredibly uncomfortable to discuss. After all, we didn’t ask for this privilege – we were just born into a system where we have it. But the reality is that we do have it, and many of the actions we take on a daily basis mean that we don’t just benefit from it but we actively take steps to perpetuate that advantage. So in this episode we’ll learn how we can recognize that privilege in our lives and we’ll start to learn about some steps we can take to address it. In upcoming episodes we’ll look at White privilege in schools, parents’ responsibility to work on dismantling systems of racial privilege, how to talk with children about race, and what children learn about race in school (and what you can do to supplement this). I’m really excited to begin this conversation, but at the same time I want to acknowledge that while these episodes are based on a close reading of the literature, this is a massive subject and I’m not the expert here – I’m learning along with you. If you think I’ve missed the mark, do let me know either in the comments or via the Contact page. And if you’d like to participate in a series of conversations on this topic with other interested parents, do join us in the free Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group – just search for #Whiteprivilege to find the thread. You might also be interested to listen back to earlier related episodes: Wait, is my toddler racist? (Recorded back when I was still learning to distinguish between prejudice and racism!) How children form social groups, which is critical to understanding how they develop prejudices in the first place.       References Addo, F.R., Houle, J.N., & Simon, D. (2016). Young, Black, and (still) in the red: Parental wealth, race, and student loan debt. Race and Social Problems 8(1), 64-76.Birkhead, T.R. (2017, April 3). The racialization of juvenile justice and the role of the defense attorney. Boston College Law Review 58(2), 379-461. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2018). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America (5th Ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Brantlinger, E., Majd-Jabbari, M., & Guskin, S.L. (1996). Self-interest and liberal educational discourse: How ideology works for middle-class mothers. American Educational Research Journal 33(3), 571-597. DiAngelo, R. (2011). White fragility. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 3(3), 54-70. Full article available at https://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFile/249/116 Goyal, M.K., Kupperman, N., & Cleary, S.D. (2015). Racial disparities in pain management of children with appendicitis in emergency departments. JAMA Pediatrics 169(11), 996-1002. Marrast, L., Himmelstein, D.U., & Woolhandler, D. (2016). Racial and ethnic disparities in mental health care for children and young adults: A national study. International Journal of Health Studies 46(4), 810-824. National Conference of State Legislators (2017, August 1). Disproportionality and disparity in child welfare. Author. Retrieved from http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/disproportionality-and-disparity-in-child-welfare.aspx Nicholson-Crotty, S., Birchmeier, Z., & Valentine, D. (2009). Exploring the impact of school discipline on racial disproportion in the juvenile justice system. Social Science Quarterly 90(4), 1003-1018. Nodjimbadem, K. (2017, May 30). The racial segregation of American cities was anything but accidental: A housing policy expert explains how federal government policies created the suburbs and the inner city. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-federal-government-intentionally-racially-segregated-american-cities-180963494/ Poehlmann, J., Dallaire, D., Loper, A.B., & Shear, L.D. (2010). Children’s contact with their incarcerated parents: Research findings and recommendations. American Psychologist 65(6), 575-598. Scheindlin, S.A. (2018, May 31). Trump’s hard-right judges will do lasting damage to America (Opinion). The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/30/trump-judge-appointments-roe-v-wade-courts Sibka, R.J., Horner, R.H., Chung, C-G., Rausch, M.K., May, S.L., & Tobin, T. (2011). Race is not neutral: A national investigation of African American and Latino disproportionality in school discipline

We’ve already covered emotion regulation a few times on the show: there were these older short episodes on Three Reasons Not to Say “You’re OK!” and Modeling Emotion Regulation, as well as the more recent one on Dr. Stuart Shanker’s book Self-Reg.   But I realized I’d never done the episode that should underlie all of these, which discusses what actually is emotion regulation and when (for crying out loud!) our children will be able to do it. So we cover that in this episode, as well as some resources to help you support your child in developing this capability, the most important of which is Dr. John Gottman’s book Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child [affiliate link].   Download your free workbook! If you’re in the thick of struggles with emotion regulation right now and you find yourself punishing or thinking about punishing your child for behavior that’s driving you crazy, you should definitely download the How to Stop Punishing Your Child (And What to Do Instead) workbook that gives you strategies to help both of you cope better with stressful situations.   Taming Your Triggers If you need help with your own big feelings about your child’s behavior, register for the Taming Your Triggers workshop.   We’ll help you to: Understand the real causes of your triggered feelings, and begin to heal the hurts that cause themUse new tools like the ones Katie describes to find ways to meet both her and her children’s needsEffectively repair with your children on the fewer instances when you are still triggered   Click the banner to sign up!     References Blankson, A.N., O’Brien, M., Leerkes, E.M., Marcovitch, S., Calkins, S.D., & Weaver, J.M. (2013). Developmental dynamics of emotion and cognition processes in preschoolers. Child Development 84(1), 346-360. Campos, J.J., Kermoian, R., & Zumbahlen, M.R. (1992). Socioemotional transformations in the family system following infant crawling onset. New Directions for Child Development 55. Cuevas, K., Deater-Deckard, K., Kim-Spoon, J., Watson, A.J., Morasch, K.C., & Bell, M.A. (2014). What’s Mom got to do with it? Contributions of maternal executive function and caregiving to the development of executive function across early childhood. Developmental Science 17(2), 224-238. Deater-Deckard, K., Wang, Z., Chen, N., Bell, M.A. (2012). Maternal executive function, harsh parenting, and child conduct problems. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 53(10), 1084-1091. Fagot, B.I., Hagan, R., Leinbach, M.D., & Kronsberg, S. (1985). Differential reactions to assertive and communicative acts of toddler boys and girls. Child Development 56(6), 1499-1505. Fox, N.A., & Calkins, S.D. (2003). The development of self-control of emotion: Intrinsic and extrinsic influences. Motivation and Emotion 27, 7-26. Differential reactions to assertive and communicative acts of toddler boys and girls. Child Development 56(6), 1499-1505. Gottman, J., & Declaire, J. (1997). Raising an emotionally intelligent child: The heart of parenting. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Graziano, P.A., Reavis, R.D., Keane, S.P., & Calkins, S.F. (2007). The role of emotion regulation and children’s early academic success. Journal of School Psychology 45(1), 3-19. Hendry, A., Jones, E.J.H., & Charman, T. (2016). Executive function in the first three years of life: Precursors, predictors and patterns. Developmental Review 42, 1-33. Kennedy, D.E., & Kramer L (2008). Improving emotion regulation and sibling relationship quality: The More Fun With Sisters and Brothers program. Family Relations 57, 567-578. Mence, M., Hawes, D.J., Wedgwood, L., Morgan, S., Barnett, B., Kohlhoff, J., & Hunt, C. (2014). Emotional flooding and hostile discipline in the families of toddlers with disruptive behavior problems. Journal of Family Psychology 28(1), 12-21. Perry, N.B., Calkins, S.D., Nelson, J.A., Leerkes, E.M., & Marcovitch, S. (2012). Mothers’ responses to children’s negative emotions and child emotion regulation: The moderating role of vagal suppression. Developmental Psychobiology 54, 503-513. Rutherford, H.J.V., Wallace, N.S., Laurent, H.K., & Mayes, L.C. (2015). Emotion regulation in parenthood. Developmental Review 36, 1-14. Siegel, D.J., & Bryson, T.P. (2018). The yes brain: How to cultivate courage, curiosity, and resilience in your child. New York, NY: Bantam. Smith, C.L., Calkins, S.D., Keane, S.P., Anastopoulos, A.D., & Shelton, T.L. (2004). Predicting stability and change in toddler behavior problems: Contributions of maternal behavior and child gender. Developmental Psychology 40, 29-42. Sroufe, A.L. (1997). Emotion development: The organization of emotional life in the early years. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Sulik, M.J., Blair, C., Mills-Koonce, R., Berry, D., & Greenberg, M. (2015). Early parenting and the development of externalizing behavior problems: Longitudinal mediation through children’s

I regularly receive questions from listeners asking me whether they should put their child in daycare or preschool and my response has typically been that there isn’t a lot of research on the benefits and drawbacks for middle class children on whether or not the child goes to daycare/preschool, and that is still true. I’ve done research on my listeners and while parents of all types listen to the show, the majority of you are fortunate enough to not be highly economically challenged. So in this episode we’ll talk about why preschool is considered to be such a good thing for children of lower-income families, and also what research is available on the effects – both positive and negative – of daycare and preschool on children of middle- and upper-income families. You’ll also hear me mention in the show that it’s really, really difficult even for researchers to accurately measure the quality of a daycare/preschool setting because you can’t just get data on child:teacher ratios and teacher qualifications to do this. You have to actually visit the setting and understand the experience of the children to do this – but what do you look for? And what questions do you ask? In the show I mention a list of questions you can ask the staff and things you can look out for that Evelyn Nichols, M.Ed of Mighty Bambinis and I put together – Click here to download. Let me know (in the comments below) if you have follow-up questions as you think through this decision for your family!   Read Full Transcript Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we’re covering an altruistic episode – one that I don’t need, because we already made this decision a long time ago – and that’s on how to decide whether you should put your child in daycare or preschool. I regularly get questions from listeners on this and my response has typically been that there isn’t a lot of research on the benefits and drawbacks for middle class children on whether or not the child goes to daycare, and that is still true. I’m going to be really up-front here and say that the vast majority of the literature related to childcare is conducted from the perspective of looking at methods to close the enormous deficit in skills – particularly language skills – with which poor children, and particularly poor Black children, enter kindergarten. Yet very, very few of these researchers ever think to question the system in which this research, and the poor children themselves, reside – these children only have a “deficit” of skills because the school system isn’t set up to value and develop the skills these children DO bring. So the vast majority of this research says something along the lines of “poor children have X, Y, and Z skills when they enter daycare, and daycare has success at closing the X gap between poor children and middle class children but not Y and Z.” Now I’ve done research on the listeners of this show and while there are certainly parents of all kinds listening, I think my listeners – and certainly the people who email me asking about daycare – are mostly fortunate enough to not be highly economically challenged. Many of them have been stay-at-home parents for several years and are trying to decide whether the child would benefit more from continuing to stay home or go to daycare, rather than making this decision from the perspective of “our family needs another income so my child is going to have to go to daycare,” although there are a few who worry about whether they are somehow being selfish for wanting to work and sending their child to daycare. So we should acknowledge that the concerns of parents who are asking me about daycare and preschool for their children are pretty different from those of most of the researchers who look at this question. But there are some researchers who have taken a different perspective, or who have looked at the data in such a way that allows us to understand more about how this decision affects our children, so today we’re going to look at the what the scientific literature says on this topic. We’ll look at whatever research is available in the pre-kindergarten years, so throughout this episode when I say “daycare” I mean care for infants, and when I say “preschool” I mean care for toddlers and up, and I’ll let you know the age group that the studies refer to. And I have a couple of other treats lined up for you as well. If you’re in the U.S. and possibly some other Western countries as well you may be gearing up for preschool touring season so my friend Evelyn Nichols, who used to run the RIE- and Reggio Emillia-inspired daycare Mighty Bambinis, has written a blog post for us drawing on her expertise running a daycare as well as her Masters in Education to help us understand what questions we should REALLY be asking on a preschool tour to get a feel for whether a preschool is going to be a good fit for your family. That post will be out next week, but if you want to get a headstart (or you have

Emotion regulation: It’s one of the biggest challenges of childhood (and parenthood!). We all want our children to be able to do it, but they struggle with it so much, and this is the root of many of our own struggles in parenting. But instead of trying to get them to reduce the intensity of their emotions, should we instead be trying to reduce the stress they experience from things like a too-hard seat at school, itchy labels, and the scratch of cutlery on plates? Is there any peer-reviewed research supporting this idea? We’ll find out in this, the most frustrating episode I’ve ever researched, on Dr. Stuart Shanker’s book Self-Reg!   References Baumeister, R.F., Twenge, J.M., & Nuss, C.K. (2002). Effects of social exclusion on cognitive processes: Anticipated aloneness reduces intelligent thought. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84(4), 817-827. Crnic, K.A., & Greenberg, M.T. (1990). Minor parenting stresses with young children. Child Development 61(5), 1628-1637. Davies, P.T., Woitach, M.J., Winter, M.A., & Cummings, E.M. (2008). Children’s insecure representations of interparental relationship and their school adjustment: The mediating role of attention difficulties. Child Development 79(5), 1570-1582. Gershoff, E.T., & Font, S.A. (2016). Corporal punishment in U.S. public schools: Prevalence, disparities in use, and status in state and federal policy. Social Policy Report 30(1). Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/j.2379-3988.2016.tb00086.x Grant, B. (2009, May 7). Elsevier published 6 fake journals. The Scientist. Retrieved from https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/elsevier-published-6-fake-journals-44160 Gross, J.J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects. Psychological Inquiry 26(1), 1-26. Full article available at http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.670.3420&rep=rep1&type=pdf Hamoudi, Amar, Murray, Desiree W., Sorensen, L., & Fontaine, A. (2015). Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress: A Review of Ecological, Biological, and Developmental Studies of Self-Regulation and Stress. OPRE Report # 2015-30, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Heaviside S, Farris E. Fast Response Survey System. Washington, DC: US GPO; 1993. Public School Kindergarten Teachers’ Views on Children’s Readiness for School. Contractor Rep. Statistical Analysis Report. Lyons, D.M., Parker, K.J., & Schatzberg, A.F. (2010). Animal models of early life stress: Implications for understanding resilience. Developmental Psychobiology 52(7), 616-624. Lyons, D.M., & Parker, K.J. (2007). Stress inoculation-induced indications of resilience in monkeys. Journal of Traumatic Stress 20(4), 423-433. Masten, A. S. (2001). Ordinary magic. Resilience processes in development. American Psychologist, 56(3), 227–238. Muraven, M., Tice, D.M., & Baumeister, R.F. (1998). Self-control as limited resource: Regulatory depletion patterns. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74(3), 774-789. Murray, D.W., Rosanbalm, K., & Christopoulos, C. (2016). Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress Report 3: A Comprehensive Review of Self-Regulation Interventions from Birth through Young Adulthood. OPRE Report # 2016-34, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Newman, K. (2014, September 3). Book publishing, not fact checking. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/09/why-books-still-arent-fact-checked/378789/ Raio, C. Orederu T.A., Palazzolo, L., Shurick, A.A., & Phelps, E.A. (2013). Cognitive emotion regulation fails the stress test. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110(37), 15139-15144. Schuessler, J. (2018, October 4). Hoaxers slip breastaurants and dog-park sex into journals. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/arts/academic-journals-hoax.html Shanker, S. (n.d.). The self-reg view on: Schools as “Self-Reg Havens.” Self-Regulation Institute. Retrieved from https://self-reg.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Mehrit_Havens.pdf?pdf=schools-havens Shanker, S., & Francis, T. (n.d.). Hide and seek: The challenge of understanding the full complexity of stress and stress-reactivity. Reframed 1(1) (no pagination). Retrieved from https://selfregulationinstitute.org/reframed-volume-1-issue-1-july-2017-hide-seek/ Shanker, S. & Burgess, C. (n.d.) Self-Reg and reframing. Reframed 1(1) (no pagination). Retrieved from https://selfregulationinstitute.org/reframed-volume-1-issue-1-july-2017-self-reg-reframing/ Silvers, J.A., Insel, C., Powers, A., Franz, P. Helion, C. Martin, R.E., Weber, J., Mischel, W., Casey, B.J., & Ochsner, K.N. (2017). vlPFC–vmPFC–Amygdala Interactions Underlie Age-Related Differences in Cognitive Regulation o

What is – WHAT? Resources for Infant Educarers, or RIE (pronounced like Rye bread) is the parenting approach that we use with our daughter Carys which is grounded in respect for the child. I’ve wanted to do an episode on this topic ever since I started the show but at first I didn’t want you thinking I was all California-granola-hippie-crazy and stop listening. Now I figure there are enough of you that have been listening for quite a while that you’re willing to at least listen to this ‘respect for children’ idea. Because it’s no exaggeration to say that it has literally transformed my parenting, and underpins every interaction I have with my daughter. I’m so proud of the relationship we have that’s based in our respect for each other. In this episode we’ll cover a brief history of how RIE came into existence, Magda Gerber’s eight qualities of a good parent, and how to encourage your child to play independently… And I’ll be honest and say that this is probably the first episode in the entire show which is not grounded in scientific research because I wanted to give you an overview of RIE first – and also discuss the parts of it we didn’t/don’t practice, before we devote an entire upcoming episode to what aspects of RIE are supported by scientific research – so stay tuned for that!   References Gerber, M., & Johnson, A. (2002). Your self-confident baby: How to encourage your child’s natural abilities – from the very start. Nashville, TN: Turner. Gerber, M. (2003). Dear Parent: Caring for infants with respect. Los Angeles, CA: Resources for Infant Educarers. Karp, H. (2004). The ‘fourth trimester’: A framework and strategy for understanding and resolving colic. Retrieved from https://www.drdefranca.com/the-fourth-trimester-and-colic.html Read Full Transcript Transcript Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we’re going to talk about a topic that is near and dear to my heart, and that is what is known as Resources for Infant Educarers, which is abbreviated to RIE, which (for reasons I’ve never understood) is pronounced “Rye.” Now I’m guessing that those of you listening to this right now are dividing yourselves into two groups: those of you in one group are saying “finally!” and those of you in the other are thinking “Resources for Infant – what???.” So this episode will really be for those of you in the second group to learn about RIE, and those of you in the first can listen along and nod your heads and email me afterward if I got any of it wrong. This will probably be the first episode in this entire show where we really don’t discuss much in the way of scientific research, because I actually have an entire episode lined up that delves into what aspects of RIE are supported by the literature, so we’re not going to do that here. And I should also acknowledge that I’m going to tell you about the core principles of RIE but I’m also going to tell you about the parts of it that I didn’t or don’t practice, because I really don’t follow any approach dogmatically. So where did RIE come from? Well, I was surprised to learn that it actually originated in the work of Dr. Emmi Pikler, who worked in Austria and Hungary in the middle of the 20th Century. She had seen that working class children who played on the street had lower rates of injuries than middle class children who played inside under a governess’ watchful eye. She also studied with two doctors who focused on treating children as people, rather than just as an illness that needed to be fixed, and who believed in the importance of being outside, playing a lot, and following the child’s lead regarding food – so not forcing the child to eat even a single spoonful more than they wanted. In 1930, Dr. Pickler married a high school math teacher who held progressive views, including that children should study at their own pace of development. When they had a daughter, Anna, in 1931, they agreed that they would follow her developmental lead – they wouldn’t prop her to sit or steady her to walk, and that they would allow space and time for her to develop at her own rate. She also began to make the connection between the physical and the mental, asking whether propping children to sit and leading them to walk communicates to the child that what the child is doing is not good enough, and that the child should be doing something that he isn’t actually yet capable of doing. In 1932, Dr. Pikler opened a private practice in Budapest where she put all these elements together for her clients, and anecdotal evidence from Pikler’s daughter Anna notes that the children in her practice seemed healthier than other children. Around 1937, a woman named Magda Gerber who was living in Hungary had a daughter who got some kind of mild illness; the family’s regular doctor was out of town and Gerber’s daughter remembered that her classmate Anna’s mother was a pediatrician so they gave her a call. Pikler came over to their house and Gerber was just about to des

We all have goals for our children, even if these are things that we’ve never formally articulated and are ideas we’ve inherited from half-remembered bits of parenting books and blogs (and the occasional podcast) and the way we were parented ourselves. But do you ever find that the way you’re parenting in the moment doesn’t necessarily support your overarching goals? So, if you have a goal to raise an independent child but every time the child struggles with something you step in and “help,” then your daily interactions with your child may not help your child to achieve that independence. In this episode Dr. Joan Grusec of the University of Toronto helps us to think through some of the ways we can shift our daily interactions with our children to ones that bring our relationship with them (rather than our need for compliance) to the fore in a way that supports our longer-term parenting goals.   Dr. Joan Grusec's Book Parenting and children's internatlization of values: A handbook of contemporary theory - Affiliate link   References Coplan, R.J., Hastings, P.D., Lagace,-Seguin, D.G., & Moulton, C.E. (2002). Authoritative and authoritarian mothers’ parenting goals, attributions, and emotions across different childrearing contexts. Parenting: Science and Practice 2(1), 1-26. Dix, T., Ruble, D.N., & Zambarano, R. (1989). Mothers’ implicit theories of discipline: Child effects, parent effects, and the attribution process. Child Development 60, 1373-1391. Grusec, J.E. (2002). Parental socialization and children’s acquisition of values. In M.H. Bornstein (Ed.). Handbook of Parenting (2nd Ed)., Volume 5: Practical issues in parenting (p.143-168). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Hastings, P.D., & Grusec, J.E. (1998). Parenting goals as organizers of responses to parent-child disagreement. Developmental Psychology 34(3), 465-479. Kelly, G. A. (1995). The psychology of personal constructs (2vols.). New York: Norton. Kuczynski, L. (1984). Socialization goals and mother-child interaction: Strategies for long-term and short-term compliance. Developmental Psychology 20(6), 1061-1073. Lin, H. (2001). Exploring the associations of momentary parenting goals with micro and macro levels of parenting: Emotions, attributions, actions, and styles. Unpublished Master’s thesis. Stillwater, OK: Oklahoma State University. Meng, C. (2012). Parenting goals and parenting styles among Taiwanese parents: The moderating role of child temperament. The New School Psychology Bulletin 9(2), 52-67. Miller, P. J., Wang, S. H., & Cho, G. E. (2002). Self-esteem as folk theory: a comparison of EA and Taiwanese mothers’ beliefs. Parenting: Science and Practice, 2, 209-239.   Read Full Transcript Transcript Jen: [00:22] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we’re going to dig into the literature on something I’ve been doing a bit intuitively for a while now, which is on setting goals for our parenting. Something that Dr Rebecca Babcock Fenerci said during our conversation on Intergenerational Trauma really stuck with me. She said, nobody sets out to be a terrible parent. In other words, all parents are doing the best that they can. Now everyone has parenting goals, whether we fully articulated them or whether they’re circulating somewhere in our subconscious that are formed by relationships we had with our parents and half remembered bits of parenting books and punk post, but what if we could bring all this stuff out of our subconscious and articulate it so that we can work towards achieving these goals? I’m not saying we should set goals like ‘by next month my introverted son is going to love going to parties,’ but if we understand what high level qualities we want our children to have as they grow up, will have a much better chance of actually achieving those goals. Jen: [02:17] So here with us today to think through all this is Dr Joan Grusec, who’s professor Emerita at the University of Toronto and have spent decades thinking about and researching this topic. Dr. Grusec received her Ba from the University of Toronto and her PHD from Stanford University before she returned to Toronto. She notes on her website that effective parenting does not involve simply the application of specific strategies and techniques or the adoption of specific styles of interaction, but the interaction of parenting strategies and children’s features like temperament, age, sex and mood, as well as something called the domain that the child is operating and that we’re going to discuss a lot more today. So don’t expect to come out of this episode with a tidy template for goal setting, but rather a framework to think about the goals that you have for your child and some ideas on how to apply it. Welcome Dr. Grusec; thanks so much for joining us. Dr. Grusec: [03:05] Thank you. Jen: [03:08] All right. Let’s go back to, well not the beginning here, but kind of a long time ago now. So you and one of your stud

If you’ve been following the show for a while now, you’ll know that my daughter and I LOVE to spend time outside. I looked at the research on the benefits of outdoor play for young children, and in my interview with Dr. Scott Sampson on his book How to Raise a Wild Child, so I am already convinced of its benefits for young children. So doesn’t it go without saying that these benefits will continue for older children, and that if we allowed school-aged children to spend more time outside then all kinds of improved learning outcomes would follow? When I started digging into the research I was shocked by what I found. Studies employing poor-quality methodology abound. I’m not sure a control group exists in the whole lot of them. And “results” are measured in terms of how much students like the program, or how much their self-esteem has improved (as subjectively measured by a teacher’s evaluation). One of the best papers I found on the topic was written by Dr. Mark Leather – it acknowledges the potential benefits of forest schools while removing the rose-tinted glasses to clearly see the limitations of the research base on this topic as well. So invited Dr. Leather onto the show to explore what are forest schools, what may be their benefits, and whether he would send his child to one…   References Aasen, W., Torunn, L., & Waters, J. (2009). The outdoor environment as a site for children’s participation, meaning-making and democratic learning: Examples from Norwegian kindergartens. Education 71(1), 5-13. Cumming, F., & Nash, M. (2015). An Australian perspective of forest school: Shaping a sense of place to support learning. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning 15J(4), 296-309. MacEachren, Z. (2018). First Nation pedagogical emphasis on imitation and making the stuff of life: Canadian lessons for indigenizing Forest Schools. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education 21, 89-102. Maciver, T. (2011) Developing practice and delivering a Forest School programme for children identified as gifted and talented. In S. Knight (Ed.)., Forest School for all (pp.41-53). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Morgan, A. (2018). Culturing the fruits of the forest: Realizing the multifunctional potential of space and place in the context of woodland and/or Forest Schools. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education 21, 117-130. Murray, R., & O’Brien, L. (2005, October). ‘Such enthusiasm – A joy to see’: An evaluation of Forest School in England. Forest Research & NEF. Retrieved from: https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/documents/1418/ForestSchoolEnglandReport.pdf Murray, R. (2003, November). A Forest School evaluation project: A study in Wales. NEF. Retrieved from: https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/research/forest-schools-impact-on-young-children-in-england-and-wales/education-and-learning-evaluation-of-forest-schools-phase-1-wales/ O’Brien, L., & Murray, R. (2006). “A marvelous opportunity for children to learn”: A participatory evaluation of Forest School in England and Wales. Forestry Commission England & Forest Research. Retrieved from: http://www.outdoorrecreationni.com/publication/benefits-of-outdoor-recreation/social-development-learning-2/a-marvellous-opportunity-for-children-to-learn-obrien-murray-2006/ Sharmaa-Brymer, V., Brymer, E., Gray, T., & Davids, K. (2018). Affordances guiding Forest School practice: The application of the ecological dynamics approach. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education 21, 103-115. Suggate, S.P. (2012). Watering the garden before a rainstorm: The case of early reading instruction. In S. Suggate and E. Reese (Eds.), Contemporary debates in childhood education and development (pp.181-190). Abingdon, England: Routeledge. Wicks, R. (2011). Forest School and looked after children. In S. Knight (Ed.)., Forest School for all (pp.153-161). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Williams-Siegfredsen, J. (2012). Understanding the Danish Forest School approach: Early years education in practice. London, U.K.: Routeledge.   Read Full Transcript   Transcript Jen: [00:34] Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we’re going to take a look at a topic that is pretty close to my heart and we’re actually going to take a pretty critical look at it while we’re at it. Our topic today is forest schools. We’ve done a couple of episodes in the past on the importance of outdoor play and on Dr Scott Sampson’s book, How to Raise a Wild Child and I think the research on the value of outdoor play two very young children is pretty clear, so I guess we sort of assume, and I’m counting myself here up until this point, that if outdoor play is great for young children, then forest schools must be also great for slightly older children and while I certainly hope that the conclusion of this episode is not that far, schools are the worst thing ever for children. I’m going to be upfront and letting you know that the quality of the scientific research on the benefits of

Parent-Teacher conferences are about to be underway in many places, so I thought it might be helpful to give you some resources to make these as productive for you and your child as possible. In this episode we talk with Dr. Margaret Caspe and Dr. Elena Lopez of the Global Family Research Project, which develops authentic partnerships to support children’s learning in the home, school, and community. I actually used Dr. Lopez’ textbook for my Master’s in Education, so I’ve been familiar with her work for a while and knew she and her colleagues at GFRP were just the right people to help us learn more about Parent-Teacher conferences (for example, did you know that teachers find them just as scary as parents?!) and understand how to advocate for our child – and for all of the children in our community. The resource guide on Parent-Teacher Conferences that we reference throughout this episode can be found here.     References Civil, M., & Quintos, B. (2009). Latina mothers' perceptions about the teaching and learning of mathematics. In B. Greer, S. Mukhopadhyay, A. B. Powell, & S. Nelson-Barber (Eds.), Culturally responsive mathematics education (pp. 321-343). New York: Routledge. Charney, R. (2002). Teaching children to care. Greenfield, MA: Northeast Foundation for Children. [note: Dr. Caspe misremembered the title as “The Responsive Classroom.”] Dweck, C. (2007). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Ballantine. [Note: check out my episode on this topic before buying this book…] George Lucas Educational Foundation (2015, August 24). Having students lead parent conferences. Author. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/practice/student-led-conferences-empowerment-and-ownership Loewus, L. (2017, August 15). The nation’s teaching force is still mostly White and female. Edweek. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/08/15/the-nations-teaching-force-is-still-mostly.html McWayne, C. M., Melzi, G., Limlingan, M. C., & Schick, A. (2016). Ecocultural patterns of family engagement among low-income Latino families of preschool children. Developmental psychology 52(7), 1088. Small, M.L. (2009). Unanticipated gains: Origins of network inequality in everyday life. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press Strauss, V. (2014, August 21). For first time, minority students expected to be majority in U.S. public schools this fall. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/08/21/for-first-time-minority-students-expected-to-be-majority-in-u-s-public-schools-this-fall/?utm_term=.3752d0eeddd7 TeacherVision (n.d.). Parent-teacher conferences: Before, during, and after. Author. Retrieved from https://www.teachervision.com/parent-teacher-conferences-during-after U.S. Department of Education (July 2016). The state of racial diversity in the educator workforce. Author. Retrived from https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/highered/racial-diversity/state-racial-diversity-workforce.pdf   Read Full Transcript   Transcript Jen: [00:21] Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we’re going to take another look at a topic related to school and it’s one that you’re going to be able to use very soon. We’re looking at parent teacher conferences. Your conferences in your new school or preschool or maybe classroom within the same school are likely coming up within the next couple of weeks. And these things can be stressful!” We get 10 minutes with a teacher whom we may or may not have had any interaction with beyond, hi, how are you?” And we really have no idea what to expect, so ideally parent teacher conferences shouldn’t just be a one shot opportunity to discuss your child’s progress in school. They should be part of an ongoing conversation about progress in school, but maybe also things happening outside school that are affecting that progress. But how can we know what to expect from these conferences and how can we prepare for them, how can we think about them in the context of all the other interactions that we are or could be having with our child’s school? Jen: [01:54] So we have not one but two guests here today to help us figure this out. We have Dr Maggie Caspe. She’s the director of research and professional learning and the global family research project. She had her masters in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Ph.D In applied developmental psychology from New York University and Dr Elena Lopez, co-director at the Global Family Research Project. She received her doctorate in social anthropology from Harvard University. Both Dr Caspe and Dr Lopez conduct research on how families, early childhood programs, schools and communities and the relationships between these support children’s learning. The Global Family Research Project prides itself on doing work that is scientifically based, cutting edge, accessible, and practical. It sounds a lot like the goals of this podcast, so I’m so excited to have them

A couple of months ago, an article by journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer – whose work I normally greatly respect – started making the rounds on Facebook. Then (knowing my approach to parenting) a couple of readers emailed it to me and asked me what I thought of it.   The article was called Go Ahead: Heap Rewards On Your Kid, with the subtitle: Parents are told stickers and trinkets for good behavior will ruin their children—but the research is wildly misunderstood.   Moyer’s main point is that while a large number of sources state that rewards are detrimental to children’s development (largely to their intrinsic motivation), “the literature on the potential dangers of rewards has been misinterpreted while the findings on its benefits have been largely overlooked.”   I had already done an episode on the negative impact of rewards on children’s development. I was prepared to wholeheartedly disagree with Moyer’s article. But I came out of it sort of half-convinced that she might be right.   So I came up with a two-pronged approach to the research for this episode. Firstly, I would dig into all the research that she read (and some more besides) to fully understand the evidence she consults, with one guiding premise: Is it possible that Moyer is right? Is it possible that rewards have some benefit for children and for families? And secondly, I wanted to ask Alfie Kohn – the author of Punished by Rewards – to address these issues in-person. Spoiler alert: heaping rewards on your kid is great for gaining compliance. If compliance is what you want in your child.   Get a free guide called How to Stop Using Rewards To Gain Your Child’s Compliance (And what to do instead) To tie in to this week’s episode, I have a FREE guide called How to Stop Using Rewards To Gain Your Child’s Compliance (And what to do instead) available as a preview of the membership group content. Each month you’ll get a guide just like this, walking you through a different aspect of parenting and helping you to make the changes needed to make sure your day-to-day-parenting is in line with your goals for the kind of child you want to raise.   Because it turns out that the desire to raise an independent, thoughtful adult with strong critical reasoning skills isn’t so well aligned with rewarding a child for complying with your wishes.   Mr. Alfie Kohn's Book Punished by rewards: Twenty-fifth anniversary edition: The trouble with gold stars, incentive plans, As, praise, and other bribes - Affiliate link   Parenting Membership If parenting feels really hard, and it seems like you’ve read all the books and you’ve asked for advice in free communities and you’re tired of having to weed through all the stuff that isn’t aligned with your values to get to the few good nuggets, then the Parenting Membership will help you out.   The Parenting Membership is now open for immediate enrollment. Sign up now!       References Barkley, R.A., & Benton, C.M. (2013). Your defiant child: 8 steps to better behavior. New York, NY: Guilford. Cameron, J., Banko, K.M., & Pierce, W.D. (2001). Pervasive negative effects of extrinsic motivation: The myth continues. The Behavior Analyst 24(1), 1-44. Deci, E.L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, E.M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin 125, 627-688. Flora, S.R., & Flora, D.B. (1999). Effects of intrinsic reinforcement for reading during childhood on reported reading habits of college students. The Psychological Record 49, 3-14. Hidi, S. (2016). Revisiting the role of rewards in motivation and learning: Implications of neuroscientific research. Educational Psychology Review 28, 61-93. Kazdin, A.E. (2008). The Kazdin method for parenting the defiant child. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin. Kohn, A. (1999). Punished by rewards: The trouble with gold stars, incentive plans, As, praise, and other bribes. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin. Kohn, A. (2016). The myth of the spoiled child: Coddled kids, helicopter parents, and other phony crises. Boston, MA: Beacon. Legault, L., Green-Demers, I., Grant, P., & Chung, J. (2007). On the self-regulation of implicit and explicit prejudice: A self-determination theory perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 33(5), 742-749. Legault, L. (2016). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. In V. Zeigler-Hill & T.K. Shackelford (Eds.)., Encyclopedia of personality and individual differences. New York, NY: Springer. MacIntyre, A. (1981). After Virtue. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Moyer, M.W. (2017, August 22). Go ahead, heap rewards on your child. Slate. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_kids/2017/08/rewards_systems_for_kids_are_effective_if_you_use_them_correctly.html?via=gdpr-consent Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of th

Is attachment the same as bonding? Can I have a healthy attachment with my baby if I don’t breastfeed? Do I have to babywear to develop an attachment to my baby? Will being apart from my baby disrupt our attachment relationship? Is co-sleeping critical to attachment?   These are just a few of the questions that listeners wrote to me after I sent out a call for questions on Attachment. This was such an enormous topic to cover that Dr. Arietta Slade and I did the best we could in the time we had, and we did indeed cover a lot of ground. If you’ve ever been curious about the scientific evidence on how attachment forms, what are its benefits, and what it has NOT been shown to do, this is the episode for you. We also cover reflective functioning, one of the central ways that the attachment relationship develops, and discuss how to improve our skills in this arena.   Check this episode for more attachment research: Most of what you know about attachment is probably wrong   Dr. Arietta Slade's Book Attachment in therapeutic practice - Affiliate link   References Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Benoit, D. (2004). Infant-parent attachment: Definition, types, antecedents, measurement and outcome. Pediatric Child Health 9(8), 541-545. Bowlby, J. (1973/1991). Attachment and Loss: Volume 2. Separation: Anxiety and anger. London, U.K.: Penguin. Bowlby, J. (1971/1991). Attachment and Loss: Volume 1. Attachment. London, U.K.: Penguin. Cassidy, J. (2008). The nature of the child’s ties. In J. Cassidy & P.R. Shaver (Eds.) Handbook of Attachment (pp.3-22). New York, NY: Guilford. Greenspan, S.H. & Salmon, J. (2002). The four-thirds solution: Solving the childcare crisis in America today. Boston, MA: Da Capo [Note that Dr. Slade mis-remembered the title of this book as “The Three Fourths Solution”] Hudson, N.W., & Fraley, R.C. (2018). Moving toward greater security: The effects of repeatedly priming attachment security and anxiety. Journal of Research in Personality 74, 147-157. Jones, J.D., Brett, B.E., Ehrlich, K.B., Lejuez, C.W., & Cassidy, J. (2014). Maternal attachment style and responses to adolescents’ negative emotions: The mediating role of maternal emotion regulation. Parenting: Science and Practice 14, 235-257. Julian, T.W., McKenry, P.C., & McKelvey, M.W. (1994). Cultural variations in parenting: Perceptions of Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American parents. Family Relations 43(1), 30-37. LeVine, R.A., & Levine, S. (2016). Do parents matter? Why Japanese babies sleep soundly, Mexican siblings don’t fight, and American families should just relax. New York, NY: PublicAffairs. Marvin, R.S., & Britner, P.A. (2008). Normative Development: The ontogeny of attachment. In J. Cassidy & P.R. Shaver (Eds.) Handbook of Attachment (pp.269-294). New York, NY: Guilford. Nicholson, B., & Parker, L. (2013). How did attachment parenting originate? Attached at the heart. Retrieved from: www.attachedattheheart.attachmentparenting.org/faq/ Raby, K.L., Roisman, G.I., Labella, M.H., Martin, J., Fraley, R.C., & Simpson, J.A. (2018). The legacy of early abuse and neglect for social and academic competence from childhood to adulthood. Online first. Retrieved from https://socialinteractionlab.dl.umn.edu/sites/g/files/pua1356/f/2018/Raby%20et%20al%20%28CD%2C%202018%29.pdf Sadler, L.S., Slade, A., & Mayes, L.C. (2006). Minding the Baby: A mentalization-based parenting Program. In J.G. Allen & P. Fonagy (Eds.), The handbook of mentalization-based treatment (pp.271-288). Chichester, U.K.: John Wiley & Sons. Slade, A. (2014). Imagining fear: Attachment, threat, and psychic experience. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 24(3), 253-266. Slade, A. (2005). Parental reflective functioning: An introduction. Attachment & Human Development 7(3), 269-281. Slade, A., Sadler, L., Dios-Kenn, C.D., Webb, D., Currier-Ezepchick, J., & Mayes, L. (2005). Minding the Baby: A reflective parenting program. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 60, 74-100. Slade, A. (2002). Keeping the baby in mind: A critical factor in perinatal mental health. Zero to Three. June/July, 10-16.     Read Full Transcript Transcript Jen: [00:37] Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we have an absolutely gigantic topic together and we have a giant in the academic world to help us think through some vet as well. I’d like to welcome Dr Arietta Slade, clinical professor at the Yale Child Study Center and Professor Emeritus in the doctoral program in Clinical Psychology at the City University of New York, and she is here today to talk with us on the topic of attachment theory. She’s an internationally recognized theoretician clinician, researcher and teacher. She’s published widely on reflective parenting, the clinical implications of attac

We’re a couple of weeks into the new school year by now and I hope that for most of you the morning drop-offs have gotten a bit easier than they were in the beginning. But some of you may still be struggling with a child who doesn’t want to go to school, who resists you leaving at drop-0ff time, and who might be suddenly suffering from stomachaches and headaches (particularly on Sunday nights or weekday mornings) that had not previously been a problem. Today’s interview with Dr. Jonathan Dalton, director of the Center for Anxiety and Behavioral Change in Rockville, MD is going to help us understand whether our child is having a ‘normal’ amount of difficulty transitioning to school or if they are struggling enough that they might need extra help – and if so, what to do about it.   References Bergin, C., & Bergin, D. (2009). Attachment in the classroom. Educational Psychology Review 21, 141-170. Dalton, J., & Beacon, V. (2018). School refusal. In D. Driver & S.S. Thomas (Eds.), Complex disorders in pediatric psychiatry: A clinician’s guide (pp 11-22). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier. Egger, H.L., Costello, J., & Angold, A. (2003). School refusal and psychiatric disorders: A community study. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 42(7), 797-807. Hallinan, M.T. (2008). Teacher influences on students’ attachment to school. Sociology of Education 81, 271-283. Hamre, B.K., & Pianta, R.C. (2001). Early teacher-child relationships and the trajectory of children’s school outcomes through eighth grade. Child Development 72(2), 625-638. Houts, R.M., Caspi, A., Pianta, R.C., Arseneault, L., & Moffitt, T.E. (2010) The challenging pupil in the classroom: The effect of the child on the teacher. Psychological Science 21(12), 1802-1810. Jerome, E.M., Hamre, B.K., & Pianta, R.C. (2009). Teacher-child relationships from kindergarten to sixth grade: Early childhood predictors of teacher-perceived conflict and closeness. Social Development 18(4), 915-945. Kearney, C.A. (2016). Managing school-based absenteeism at multiple tiers: An evidence-based and practical guide for professionals. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. Kearney, C.A., & Albano, A.M. (2007). When children refuse school: A cognitive-behavioral therapy approach, Therapist guide (2nd Ed.). Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. Kearney, C.A. (2006). Dealing with school refusal behavior: A primer for family physicians. Family Practice 55(8), 685-692. Kearney, C.A. (2002). Identifying the function of school refusal behavior: A revision of the school refusal assessment scale. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment 24(4), 235-245. King, N., Tonge, B.J., Heyne, D., & Ollendick, T.H. (2000). Research on the cognitive-behavioral treatment of school refusal: A review and recommendations. Clinical Psychology Review 20(4), 495-507. Ladd, G.W., & Dinella, L.M. (2009). Continuity and change in early school engagement: Predictive of children’s achievement trajectories from first to eighth grade? Journal of Educational Psychology 101(1), 190-206. Ladd, G.W., & Buhs, E.S., & Seid, M. (2000). Children’s initial sentiments about kindergarten: Is school liking an antecedent of early classroom participation and achievement? Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 46(2), 255-279. Last, C. G., Hansen, C., & Franco, N. (1998). Cognitive-behavioral treatment of school phobia. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 37, 404–411. Pianta, R. C., Belsky, J., Vandergrift, N., Houts, R. M., & Morrison, F. J. (2008). Classroom effects on children’s achievement trajectories in elementary school. American Educational Research Journal 45 (2), 365–397   Read Full Transcript   Transcript Jen: [00:00:37] Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we are going to help a whole lot of parents who are in the middle of a massive transition, and that is the transition to kindergarten or school. Many people, adults included, don’t love change. It’s certainly much easier to keep doing the same things we’ve been doing with the people we know and love than it is to go to a completely new place with people we mostly don’t know whoever new expectations for us that we don’t know if we can meet and we also have to start getting up really early in the mornings, which can introduce all kinds of new power struggles at bed time so we might not be able to solve all of these problems today, but we’re going to take a specific look at what is known as school refusal, which is pretty much what it sounds like when a child says “I don’t want to go to school.” Jen: [00:01:24] To help us understand this and figure out what to do about it, we’re here today with Dr Jonathan Dalton, who is a licensed psychologist and the Director of the Center for Anxiety and Behavioral change in Rockville, Maryland. He received his BA in psychology from Villanova University an MA in psychology from the Catholi

This episode revisits the concept of the 30 Million Word Gap concept, which we first covered in an interview with Dr. Doug Sperry a few weeks back. After she heard that I was going to talk with Dr. Sperry, Dr. Roberta Golinkoff – with whom we discussed her book Becoming Brilliant almost two years ago now – asked to come back on to present a rebuttal. We’re going to learn a lot more about the importance of child-directed speech! This episode serves two purposes: it helps us to understand another aspect of the 30 Million Word Gap, and it also demonstrates pretty clearly that scientists – both of whom have the best interests of children at heart – see very different ways of achieving that end. Jump to highlights (04:17) The origin of the 30-million-word gap (06:32) Addressing children directly is important (11:47) Kindergarten has become the new first grade. (17:19) The difference between infant-directed and adult-directed speech. (39:08) Children also need to be responded to in terms of things that are of interest to them   References Adair, J.K., Colegrave, K.S-S, & McManus. M.E. (2017). How the word gap argument negatively impacts young children of Latinx immigrants’ conceptualizations of learning. Harvard Educational Review 87(3), 309-334. Avineri, N., Johnson, E., Brice‐Heath, S., McCarty, T., Ochs, E., Kremer‐Sadlik, T., Blum, S., Zentella, A.C., Rosa, J., Flores, N., Alim, H.S., & Paris, D. (2015). Invited forum: Bridging the “language gap”. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 25(1), 66-86. Bassok, D., Latham, S., & Rorem, A. (2016). Is Kindergarten the new first grade? AERA Open 1(4), 1-31. Baugh, J. (2017). Meaning-less difference: Exposing fallacies and flaws in “The Word Gap” hypothesis that conceal a dangerous “language trap” for low-income American families and their children. International Multilingual Research Journal 11(1), 39-51. Brennan, W. (2018, April). Julie Washington’s quest to get schools to respect African American English. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/the-code-switcher/554099/ Correa-Chavez, M., & Rogoff, B. (2009). Children’s attention to interactions directed to others: Guatemalan and European American Patterns. Developmental Psychology 45(3), 630-641. Craig, H.K., & Washington, J.A. (2004). Grade-related changes in the production of African American English. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47(2), 450-463. Gee, J.P. (1985). The narrativization of experience in the oral style. Journal of Education 167(1), 9-57 Genishi, C., & Dyson, A. (2009). Children, language, and literacy: Diverse learners in diverse times. New York: Teachers College Press. Golinkoff, R.M., Hoff, E., Rowe, M.L., Tamis-LeMonda, C., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (in press). Language matters: Denying the existence of the 30 Million Word Gap has serious consequences. Child Development. Lee-James, R., & Washington, J.A. (2018). Language skills of bidialectal and bilingual children: Considering a strengths-based perspective. Topics in Language Disorders 38(1), 5-26. Long, H. (2017, September 15). African Americans are the only U.S. racial group earning less than in 2000. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-african-americans-income-census-20170918-story.html NAEP (2017). National student group scores and score gaps (Reading). NAEP. Retrieved from: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_2017/#nation/gaps?grade=4 Rogoff, B., Mistry, J., Goncu, A., ,& Mosier, C. (1993). Guided participation in cultural activity by toddlers and caregivers. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development Series No. 236, 58(8), v-173. Ward, M.C. (1971). Them children: A study in language learning. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Washington, J.A., Branum-Martin, L., Sun, C., & Lee-James, R. (2018). The impact of dialect density on the growth of language and reading in African American children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 49, 232-247.

We recently did an episode on the impact of intergenerational trauma, which was about how the ways we were parented, and even the ways our parents were parented, ends up influencing the relationship we have with our children – and often not in a positive way. But there’s another side to this story: relationships between the generations can actually have enormously beneficial effects on children’s lives, even when these are affected by issues like radically different parenting styles, and mental illness. Today we explore the more positive side of intergenerational relationship with Dr. Peter Whitehouse, who (along with his wife, Cathy) co-founded The Intergenerational School in Cleveland, OH, which is now part of a small network of three schools that use this model. Have you ever thought about how you talk about ageing effects what your children think about older people? (I hadn’t, but I have now!) Do you struggle to navigate the difference between the things your parents want to say to and buy for your child, and your own values? Do you worry about what your child might think of their grandparent’s absent-mindedness or volatility? Join us as Dr. Whitehouse and I navigate a path through these and other issues. Jump to highlights (03:07) The definition of intergenerativity. (09:04) how people and other cultures interact with the elderly generally, and specifically with grandparents in particular (13:49) When kids have a good relationship with elders in their own family, they are more open to relationships with adults and elders in society at large. (16:56) The underlying principle of the intergenerational school and how it differs from a typical school. (19:35) What an intergenerational playground looks like. (35:15) The tension we feel in life about the security of the same and the danger of difference. (39:11) How can families encourage intergenerational relationships? (51:46) The more we compartmentalize people and categorize them as sick or diseased, the more we're afraid of them.   References Babcock, R., MaloneBeach, E.E., & Woodworth-Hou, B. (2016). Intergenerational intervention to mitigate children’s bias against the elderly. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships 14(4), 274-287. Bessell, S. (2017). The role of intergenerational relationships in children’s experiences of community. Children & Society 31, 263-275. Bostrom, A-K., & Schmidt-Hertha, B. (2017). Intergenerational relationships and lifelong learning. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships 15(1), 1-3. Even-Zohar, A., & Garby, A. (2016). Great-grandparents’ role perception and its contribution to their quality of life. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships 14(3), 197-219. Flash, C. (2015). The Intergenerational Learning Center, Providence Mount St. Vincent, Seattle. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships 13(4), 338-341. George, D.R., & Whitehouse, P.J. (2010). Intergenerational volunteering and quality of life for persons with mild-to-moderate dementia: Results from a 5-month intervention study in the United States. Journal of the American Geriatric Society 58(4), 796-797. Geraghty, R., Gray, J., & Ralph, D. (2015). ‘One of the best members of the family’: Continuity and change in young children’s relationships with their grandparents. In L. Connolly (Ed.), The ‘Irish’ Family (pp.124-139). New York, NY: Routledge. Hake, B.J. (2017). Gardens as learning spaces: Intergenerational learning in urban food gardens. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships 15(1), 26-38. Hawkes, K., O’Connell, J.F., Jones, B.G.B., Alvarez, H., & Charnov, E.L. (2000). The grandmother hypothesis and human evolution. In Adaptation and Human Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective, edited by L. Cronk, N. Chagnon & W. Irons, pp. 231-252. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Kirkwood, T., Bond, J., May, C., McKeith, I., & Teh, M. (2010). Mental capital and wellbeing through life: Future challenges. In C. Cooper, J. Field, U. Goswami, R. Jenkins, & B. Sahakian (Eds.), Mental capital and wellbeing (pp. 3–53). Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Low, L-F., Russell, F., McDonald, T., & Kauffman, A. (2015). Grandfriends, an intergenerational program for nursing-home residents and preschoolers: A randomized trial. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships 13(3), 227-240. Murayama, Y., Obha, H., Yasunanaga, M., Nonaka, K., Takeuchi, R., Nishi, M., Sakuma, N., Uchida, H., Shinkai, S., & Fujiwara, Y. (2015). The effect of intergenerational programs on the mental health of elderly adults. Aging and Mental Health 19(4), 306-316. Schwartz, L.K., & Simmons, J.P. (2001). Contact quality and attitudes toward the elderly. Educational Gerontology 27(2), 127-137. Senior, E., & Green J. (2017). Through the ages: Developing relationships between the young and the old. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships 15(3), 295-305. Sun, Y., & Jiang, N. (2017). The effect of grandparents’ co-parenting on young children’s pers

“I spent the whole morning painting and doing origami and felting projects with my daughter – and not only did she not say “thank you,” but she refused to help clean up!” (I actually said this myself this morning:-)) “We took our son to Disneyland and went on every ride he wanted to go on except one, which was closed, and he spent the rest of the trip whining about how the whole trip was ruined because he didn’t get to go on that one ride.” (I hope I never have to say this one…I’m not sure I could make it through Disneyland in one piece.)   You might recall that we did an episode a while back on manners, and what the research says about teaching manners, and how what the research says about teaching manners comes from the assumption that manners MUST be explicitly taught – that your child will NOT learn to say “thank you” unless you tell your child “say thank you” every time someone gives them a gift. We also talked about how parent educator Robin Einzig uses the concept of “modeling graciousness” and that if you treat other people graciously, when your child is ready, she will be gracious as well. The problem here, of course, is that most people expect your child to display some kind of manners before they are developmentally ready to really understand the concept behind it. But what really underlies manners? Well, ideas like gratitude. Because when we train children to say “thank you” before they are ready to do it themselves they might learn to recite the words at the appropriate time, but they aren’t really experiencing gratitude. Dr. Jonathan Tudge of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro tells us much more about this, and how we can scaffold our child’s ability to experience gratitude, if we decide we might want to do that. Dr. Tudge’s book, Developing Gratitude in Children and Adolescents (co-edited with Dr. Lia B. L. Freitas) contains lots more academic research on this topic if you’re interested.   References Halberstadt, A.G., Langley, H.A., Hussong, A.M., Rothenberg, W.A., Coffman, J.L., Mokrova, I., & Costanzo, P.R. (2016). Parents’ understanding of gratitude in children: A thematic analysis. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 36, 439-451. Kiang, l. Mendonca S., Liang, Y., Payir, A., O’Brien, L.T., Tudge, J.R.H., & Freitas, L.B.L. (2016). If children won lotteries: Materialism, gratitude, and imaginary windfall spending. Young Consumers 17(4), 408-418. Mendonca, S.E., Mercon-Vargas, E.A., Payir, A., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2018). The development of gratitude in seven societies: Cross-cultural highlights. Cross-Cultural Research 52(1), 135-150. Mercon-Vargas, E.A., Poelker, A.E., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2018). The development of the virtue of gratitude: Theoretical foundations and cross-cultural issues. Cross-Cultural Research 52(1), 3-18. Mokrova, I.L., Mercon-Vargas, E.A., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2018). Wishes, gratitude, and spending preferences in Russian Children. Cross-Cultural Research 52(1), 102-116. Nelson, J.A., Freitas, L.B.L., O’Brien, M., Calkins, S.D., Leerkes, E.M., & Marcovich, S. (2013). Preschool-aged children’s understanding of gratitude: Relations with emotion and mental state knowledge. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 31, 42056. Tudge, J.R.H., & Freitas, L.B.L. (Eds.) (2018). Developing gratitude in children and adolescents. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press. Wang, D., Wang, Y.C., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2015). Expressions of gratitude in children and adolescents: Insights from China and the United States. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 46(8), 1039-1058.   Read Full Transcript   Transcript Jen: [00:38] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. You might recall that we did an episode a while back on manners and what the research says about teaching manners and how what the research says about teaching manners comes from the assumption that manners must be explicitly taught, that your child will not learn to say thank you unless you tell your child, say thank you every time someone gives them a gift. We also talked about how parent educator Robin Einzig uses the concept of “modeling graciousness” and that if you treat other people graciously when your child is ready, she will be gracious as well. The problem here, of course, is that most people expect your child to display some kind of manners before they’re developmentally ready to really understand the concept behind it. Recently I saw an article from the University of California Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center about the development of gratitude and I saw it quoted Professor Jonathan Tudge, who is actually edited a very recent book of research called developing gratitude in children and adolescents, and I knew we’d found the right person to speak with about this. Jen: [01:42] Professor Tudge, who goes by “Jon,” works in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, altho

Do you ever snap at your child over tiny things, and wonder where that intense anger comes from? You're not alone - and there's actually a scientific explanation for why this happens.   What you're experiencing might be intergenerational trauma - the way traumatic experiences and their effects get passed down from parents to children, often without us even realizing it. But here's the hopeful part: understanding how this works is the first step to breaking the cycle.   In this episode, I talk with Dr. Rebecca Babcock-Fenerci, a clinical psychologist from Stonehill College who researches exactly how trauma transmits across generations and what we can do about it. She explains the science behind the reasons our brains react so strongly to certain parenting situations, and why some survivors seem to come through trauma unscathed while others struggle daily. Most importantly, she helps us to examine some of the ways we can recognize the impact of this trauma on ourselves. And with this awareness and the right tools, we can heal these patterns and create the calm, connected relationships with our children that we've always wanted.   Questions This Episode Will Answer What is the definition of intergenerational trauma? Dr. Babcock-Fenerci explains that intergenerational trauma occurs when parents who experienced trauma pass both the direct traumatic experiences and the psychological consequences (like PTSD, mood disorders, and disrupted attachment) to their children through various mechanisms including genetics, epigenetics, and parenting behaviors.   How is trauma actually passed down through generations? Trauma transmits through multiple pathways: genetic predisposition, epigenetic changes (where experiences turn genes on or off), trauma-related thought patterns in parents, and when children serve as unconscious trauma reminders that trigger the parent's unprocessed emotions and memories.   Why do some trauma survivors seem fine while others struggle a lot more? Individual responses vary based on genetic predisposition, personality differences, other life stressors, and the severity/duration of the trauma. Even siblings in the same family can have completely different outcomes due to these complex interactions between genetics and environment.   Should parents talk to their children about their trauma history? The answer lies between two extremes - never talking about it can prevent healing, while over-sharing inappropriately can cause vicarious trauma. Parents should consider the child's developmental stage, let children's questions guide conversations, and think through the purpose and potential impact before sharing.   What are common anger triggers for parents with trauma history? Parents often get triggered by situations that unconsciously remind them of their own childhood experiences - like children repeating behaviors, not listening, or general parenting situations that activate old trauma memories. The key is gaining insight into why these specific situations cause such intense reactions.   How can parents recognize if their trauma is affecting their children? Warning signs include behavior problems, mood issues, anxiety, conflict in the parent-child relationship, or when a parent notices their own emotional reactions seem disproportionate to the situation. These may indicate intergenerational trauma transmission.   What can parents do to break the cycle of family trauma? Processing involves gaining insight into triggers, understanding where intense emotions come from, seeking therapy when needed, learning emotional regulation techniques like taking breaths during triggered moments, and working on unresolved trauma with professional support.   What You'll Learn in This Episode You'll discover the science behind what we know of how trauma passes between generations, including the role of epigenetics, and how unprocessed trauma memories affect current parenting situations.   Through discussion of various stories (including a Vietnamese refugee family, an adoptee from Russia, and a family who escaped domestic violence), you'll see how intergenerational trauma plays out in real families and recognize patterns in your own life.   Learn concrete techniques for managing trauma triggers, including the power of taking a breath before reacting, gaining insight into your emotional patterns, and working as a family team to manage difficult moments together.   Dr. Babcock-Fenerci shares research-backed approaches to trauma processing, when therapy is helpful, and considerations for confronting people who have hurt you.   Understand why trauma memories work differently than regular memories, how the fight-or-flight response affects parenting, and why gaining conscious insight into unconscious patterns can literally change how your brain responds to triggers.   FAQ Does having childhood trauma mean I'll definitely harm my children? No. Researc

Pretty regularly I see posts in online parenting groups saying “My child loves to pretend, and they always want me to participate. I dare not tell anyone else, but I CAN’T STAND PRETEND PLAY. What should I do?” In this final (unless something else catches my interest!) episode in our extended series on play, Dr. Ansley Gilpin of the University of Alabama helps us to do a deep dive into what children learn from pretend play, and specifically what they learn from fantasy play, which is pretend play regarding things that could not happen in real life (like making popcorn on Mars). We’ll discuss the connection between fantasy play and children’s executive function, the problems with studying fantasy play, and the thing you’ve been waiting for: do you HAVE to do fantasy play with your child if you just can’t stand it (and what to do instead!) If you missed other episodes in this series, you might want to check them out: we started out asking “what is the value of play?”, then we looked at the benefits of outdoor play and talked with Dr. Scott Sampson about his book How to Raise a Wild Child. We wrapped up with outdoor play by trying to understand whether we should allow our children to take more risks.     References Bergen, D. (2013). Does pretend play matter? Searching for Evidence: Comment on Lillard et al. (2013). Psychological Bulletin 139(1), 45-48. Buchsbaum, D., Bridgers, S., Weisberg, D.S., & Gopnik, A. (2012). The power of possibility: Causal learning, counterfactual reasoning, and pretend play. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 367. 2202-2212. Carlson, S.M., White, R.E., & Davis-Unger, A.C. (2014). Evidence for a relation between executive function and pretense representation in preschool children. Cognitive Development 29, 1-16. Gilpin, A.T., Brown, MM., & Pierucci, J.M. (2015). Relations between fantasy orientation and emotion regulation in preschool. Early Education and Development 26(7), 920-932. Hirsh-Pasek, K., Weisberg, D.S., & Golinkoff, R.M. (2013). Embracing complexity: Rethinking the relation between play and learning: Comment on Lillard et al. (2013). Psychological Bulletin 139(1), 35-39. Hoffman, J.D., & Russ, S.W. (2016). Fostering pretend play skills and creativity in elementary school school girls: A group play intervention. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 10(1), 114-125. Krasnor, L. R., & Pepler, D. J. (1980). The study of children’s play: Some suggested future directions. In K. H. Rubin (Ed.), Children’s play: New directions for child development (pp. 85–95). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Lancy, D. F. (2015). The anthropology of childhood: Cherubs, chattel, changelings. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Li, J., Hestenes, L.L., & Wang, Y.C. (2016). Links between preschool children’s social skills and observed pretend play in outdoor childcare environments. Early Childhood Education Journal 44, 61-68. Lillard, A. (2011). Mother-child fantasy play. In A. D. Pelligrini (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of the development of play (pp. 284–295). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Lillard, A.S., Lerner, M.D., Hopkins, E.J., Dore, R.A., Smith, E.D., & Palmquist, C.M. (2013). The impact of pretend play on children’s development: A review of the evidence. Psychological Bulletin 139(1), 1-34. Lillard, A.S., Hopkins, E.J., Dore, R.A., Palmquist, C.M., Lerner, M.D., & Smith, E.D. (2013). Concepts, theories, methods and reasons: Why do the children (pretend) play? Reply to Weisberg, Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff (2013); Bergen (2013); and Walker and Gopnik (2013). Psychological Bulletin 139(1), 49-52. Ma, L., & Lillard, A. (2017). The evolutionary significance of pretend play: Two-year-olds’ interpretation of behavioral cues. Learning & Behavior 45, 441-448. Paley, V. (2009). The importance of fantasy, fairness, and friends in children’s play: An interview with Vivian Gussin Paley. American Journal of Play 2(2), 121-138. Pierucci, J.M., O’Brien, C.T., McInnis, M.A., Gilpin, A.T., & Barber, A.B. (2014). Fantasy orientation constructs and related executive function development in preschool: Developmental benefits to executive functions by being a fantasy-oriented child. International Journal of Behavioral Development 38(1), 62-69. Singer, D.G., & Singer, J.L. (2013). Reflections on pretend play, imagination, and child development. Interview in American Journal of Play 6(1), 1-13. Sutton-Smith, B., & Kelly-Byrne, D. (1984). The idealization of play. In P. K. Smith (Ed.), Play in animals and humans (pp. 305–321). Oxford, England: Blackwell. Taggart, J., Heise, M.J., & Lillard, A.S. (2018). The real thing: Preschoolers prefer actual activities to pretend ones. Developmental Science 21, e12582.   Read Full Transcript   Transcript Jen: [00:38] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of your parenting Mojo. We’ve done a number of episodes by now in our series on the importance of play and I

The Marshmallow Test is one of the most famous experiments in Psychology: Dr. Walter Mischel and his colleagues presented a preschooler with a marshmallow. The child was told that the researcher had to leave the room for a period of time and the child could either wait until the researcher returned and have two marshmallows, or if the child couldn’t wait, they could call the researcher back by ringing a bell and just have one marshmallow. The idea was to figure how delayed gratification develops, and, in later studies, understand its importance in our children’s lives and academic success.   Dr. Mischel and his colleagues have followed some of the children he originally studied and have made all kinds of observations about their academic, social, and coping competence, and even their health later in life. But a new study by Dr. Tyler Watts casts some doubt on the original results. In this episode we talk with Dr. Watts about the original work and some of its flaws (for example, did you know that the original sample consisted entirely of White children of professors and grad students, but the results were extrapolated as if they apply to all children?). We then discuss the impact of his new work, and what parents should take away from all of this. As a side note that you might enjoy, my almost 4YO saw me open my computer to publish this episode and asked me what I was doing. I said I needed to publish a podcast episode and she asked me what it was about. I told her it’s about the Marshmallow Test and asked her if she wanted to try it. She is, as I type, sitting at our dining room table with three marshmallows on a plate in front of her, trying to hold out for 15 minutes. We’re not doing it in strictly; we are both still in the room with her, although we’re both typing and ignoring her and asking her to turn back toward the table when she asks us a question. She keeps asking how many minutes have passed, which I imagine (as I tell her) is quite helpful to her in terms of measuring the remaining effort needed. She seems most torn between wanting to continue building her Lego airport and the need for the three marshmallows. She has sung a bit, and smelled the marshmallows a bit, and stacked them into a tower, but she is mostly trying to ignore them and is counting as high as she can. 14 minute update [quiet, despairing voice]: “I’ve been waiting for so long…” She did make it to 15 minutes (that’s her devouring the third marshmallow in the picture for this episode), although I wonder if she might not have without the time updates. We’ll have to try that another day:-)   References Bembenutty, H., & Karabenick, S.A. (2004). Inherent association between academic delay of gratification, future time perspective, and self-regulated learning. Educational Psychology Review 16(1), 35-57. Bennett, J. (2018, May 25). NYU Steinhardt Professor replicates famous Marshmallow Test, makes new observations. New York University. Retrieved from https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2018/may/nyu-professor-replicates-longitudinal-work-on-famous-marshmallow.html Berman M.G., Yourganov, G., Askren, M.K., Ayduk, O., Casey, B.J., Gotlib, I.H., Kross, E., McIntosh, A.R., Strogher, S., Wilson, N.L., Zayas, V., Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Jonides, J. (2013). Dimensionality of brain networks linked to life-long individual differences in self-control. Nature Communications 4(1373), 1-7. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Calarco, J.M. (2018, June 1). Why rich kids are so good at the Marshmallow Test. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmallow-test/561779/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=family-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20180602&silverid-ref=MzYwODc2MjE4MjE4S0 Carlson, S.M., Shoda, Y., Ayduk, O., Aber, L., Schaefer, C., Sethi, A., Wilson, N., Peake, P.K., & Mischel, W. (2017). Cohort effects in children’s delay of gratification. HECO Working Paper Series 2017-077. Duckworth, A.L., Tsukayama, E., & Kirby, T.A. (2013). Is it really self-control? Examining the predictive power of the delay of gratification task. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 39(7), 843-855. Imuta, K., Hayne, H., & Scarf, D. (2014). I want it all and I want it now: Delay of gratification in preschool children. Developmental Psychobiology 56, 1541-1552. Kidd, C., Palmeri, H., & Aslin, R.N. (2012). Rational snacking: Young children’s decision-making on the marshmallow task is moderated by beliefs about environmental reliability. Cognition 126, 109-114. Michaelson, L.E., & Munakata, Y. (2016). Trust matters: Seeing how an adult treats another person influences preschoolers’ willingness to delay gratification. Developmental Science 19(6), 1011-1019. Mischel, W., & Ebbesen, E. (1970). Attention in delay of gratification. Journal of Per

You all know that on the show we pretty much steer clear of the clickbait articles that try to convince you that something is wrong with your child, in favor of getting a balanced view of the overall body of literature on a topic. But every once in a while a study comes along and I think “we really MUST learn more about that, even though it muddies the water a bit and leads us more toward confusion than a clear picture.” This is one of those studies. We’ll learn about the original Hart & Risley study that identified the “30 Million Word Gap” that so much policy has been based on since then, and what are the holes in that research (e.g. did you know that SIX African American families on welfare in that study are used as proxies for all poor families in the U.S., only 25% of whom are African American?). Then, Dr. Doug Sperry will tell us about his research, which leads him to believe that overheard language can also make a meaningful contribution to children’s vocabulary development. I do want to be 100% clear on one point: Dr. Sperry says very clearly that he believes parents speaking with children is important for their development; just that overheard language can contribute as well. And this is not Dr. Sperry out on his own criticizing research that everyone else agrees with: if you’re interested, there are a host of other issues listed here. The overarching problem, of course, is that our school system is so inflexible that linguistic skills – even really incredible ones of the type we discussed in our recent episode on storytelling – have no place in the classroom if they don’t mesh with the way that White, middle-class families (and, by extension, teachers and students) communicate. But that will have to be an episode for another day.   References Adair, J. K., Colegrove, K. S-S., & McManus, M. E. (2017). How the word gap argument negatively impacts young children of Latinx Immigrants’ conceptualizations of learning. Harvard Educational Review, 87(3), 309-334. Akhtar, N., & Gernsbacher, M.A. (2007). Joint attention and vocabulary development: A critical look. Language and Linguistic Compass 1(3), 195-207. Callanan, M., & Waxman, S. (2013). Commentary on special section: Deficit or difference? Interpreting diverse developmental paths. Developmental Psychology 49(1), 80-83. Dennett, D. (1995). Darwin’s dangerous idea: Evolution and the meaning of life. New York, NY: Touchstone. Dudley-Marling, C., & Lucas, K. (2009). Pathologizing the language and culture of poor children. Language Arts 86(5), 362-370. Gee, J.P. (1985). The narrativization of experience in the oral style. Journal of Education 167(1), 9-57. Genishi, C., & Dyson, A. H. (2009). Children, language, and literacy: Diverse learners in diverse times. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Hoff, E. (2013). Interpreting the early language trajectories of children from low-SES and language minority homes: Implications for closing achievement gaps. Developmental Psychology 49(1), 4-14. Johnson, E.J. (2015). Debunking the “language gap.” Journal for Multicultural Education 9(1), 42-50. Miller, P.J., & Sperry, D.E. (2012). Déjà vu: The continuing misrecognition of low-income children’s verbal abilities. In S.T. Fiske & H.R. Markus (Eds.), Facing social class: How societal rank influences interaction (pp.109-130). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Sperry, D.E., Sperry, L.L., & Miller, P.J. (2018). Reexamining the verbal environments of children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Child Development (Early online publication). Full article available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peggy_Miller3/publication/324839950_Reexamining_the_Verbal_Environments_of_Children_From_Different_Socioeconomic_Backgrounds/links/5aec67fda6fdcc8508b77912/Reexamining-the-Verbal-Environments-of-Children-From-Different-Socioeconomic-Backgrounds.pdf Walker, D., Greenwood, C., Hart, B., & Carta, J. (1994). Prediction of school outcomes based on early language production and socioeconomic factors. Child Development 65(2), 606-621.   Read Full Transcript   Transcript Jen:[00:38] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. I think today we’re going to blow a few holes in some classic research. You might have heard of what’s known as the 30 Million Word Gap, which at a high level is the idea that middle class parents talk so much more to their young children on a daily basis than poor parents do, and that this accumulates a gap of 30 million words by the time the children are four years old. So I took a brief look at this study a while back and I noticed that the researchers, Professor Betty Hart of the University of Kansas and Professor Todd Risley at the University of Alaska Anchorage, conflated a couple of important variables in the study, those of wealth and education, which is why I haven’t done an episode on it and whenever anyone asks me about it, I mentioned that the study’s

“Storytelling? I’m already reading books to my child – isn’t that enough?” Your child DOES get a lot out of reading books (which is why we’ve done a several episodes on that already, including What children learn from reading books, How to read with your child, and Did you already miss the boat on teaching your toddler how to read?. But it turns out that storytelling benefits our relationship with our child in ways that reading books really can’t, because you’re looking at the book rather than at your child. If you ask your child what kind of story they’d like you to tell, you also get incredible insight into both their interests and concerns – I can attest to this, as I’ve been singing story-songs about poop and various kinds of baby animals who can’t find their mamas on and off for several weeks now (we had an incident a few months back where she couldn’t find me in a store). In this episode we also discuss the ways that people from different cultures tell stories, and what implications this has for them as they interact with our education system. Other episodes mentioned in this show: 035: Is your parenting All Joy and No Fun?   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] 00:01 If we want our children to have the best chance to live fulfilling lives, that can you keep up with all the books and scientific research on parenting, and fit the information into your own philosophy on how to raise kids. Welcome to Your Parenting Mojo, the podcast that does the work for you by investigating and examining respectful research-based parenting tools to help kids thrive. Now welcome your host, Jen Lumanlan. Jen Lumanlan 00:38 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Before we get going with today’s topic on the subject of storytelling, I wanted to let you know about a little something I’ve been working on for a while now. I think I’ve mentioned before that I was working on a Master’s in Education – well, I’ve finished that now and I’m actually not in school at the moment which is both amazingly freeing and rather strange. I’ve mentioned before that after we made the decision to homeschool our daughter, whenever anyone asked me about homeschooling, they would always ask me the same questions, so I created a course to help families figure out whether homeschooling could be right for them – you can find more info on that at yourhomeschoolingmojo.com if you like. But a lot of friends said “homeschooling sounds awesome, but I could never do it,” or “homeschooling sounds awesome but I don’t want to do it,” or just “we’re committed to public schools.” When I asked them to tell me more about this they invariably expressed some kind of anxiety about this decision – kind of a “we’re committed to public schools but….” – they’re worried about class sizes and a lack of funding and the quality of the education their child will receive. And I thought to myself: “hmmm…what if there was a way to take everything I’ve learned during a master’s in psychology and another in Education and make it relevant to people who are committed to public school for whatever reason, but who recognize the limitations in the system and want their children to come out of public school among the 40% of 12th-graders who can read and do math at or above a proficient level, and not among the 60% who are at a basic or below-basic level. Parents want to imbue their children with a love of learning, but research has shown that the toddlers who couldn’t stop asking questions basically stop being curious by about third grade. Instead of asking why things happen or how things work, they learn that their job is to answer the teacher’s questions, rather than to ask their own. And when I interviewed parents, I also found they didn’t know where to start in supporting their child’s learning – they’ve been reading to their child since birth, and they taught their child how to count, but they just have no idea what to do next. Jen Lumanlan 02:34 So I took what I learned during those degrees, and I did a whole lot of research outside of them, and I talked with Principals and teachers and parents and I asked them what challenge they had had. What challenges they had in teaching, and in parenting children in school, and in teachers and parents working together, and in catching small problems before they become really big problems, which I found actually doesn’t happen all that often – it was way more common than I’d thought for something to go unnoticed for quite a while and even once it was noticed, to take quite a while to fix. It really wasn’t uncommon for a student to lose the better part of a year of learning waiting for testing for learning disabilities, or while being bullied, or simply because they had a personality mismatch with their teacher. I took all of the research on those topics, and a number of others besides, and I made a course for you lovely people that will give you the tools and support you need to pre

“Social and Emotional Learning” is all the rage in school these days, along with claims that it can help children to manage their emotions, make responsible decisions, as well as improve academic outcomes. But what if those programs don’t go nearly far enough? What if we could support our child in developing a sense of compassion that acts as a moral compass to not only display compassion toward others, but also to pursue those things in life that have been demonstrated – through research – to make us happy? And what if we could do that by supporting them in reading cues they already feel in their own bodies, and that we ordinarily train out of them at a young age? Dr. Brendan Ozawa-de Silva, Associate Director for the Emory University’s Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics, tells us about his work to bring secular ethics, which he calls the cultivation of basic human values, into education and society Learn more about Breandan’s work here: www.compassion.emory.edu https://www.facebook.com/emoryseelearning/   We also mentioned the Yale University course The Psychology of Wellbeing, which is available on Coursera here.       References Desbordes, G., Negi, L.T., Pace, T.W.W., Wallace, B.A., Raison, C.L., & Schwartz, E.L. (2012). Effects of mindful-attention and compassion medication training on amygdala response to emotional stimuli in an ordinary, non-meditative state. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 6(1), 1-15. Frey, K.S., Nolen, S.B., Edstrom, L.V., & Hirschstein, M.K. (2005). Effects of a school-based social-emotional competence program: Linking children’s goals, attributions, and behavior. Applied Developmental Psychology 26, 171-200. Lantieri, L., & Nambiar, M. (2012). Cultivating the social, emotional, and inner lives of children and teachers. Reclaiming Children and Youth 21(2), 27-33. Maloney, J.E., Lawlor, M.S., Schonert-Reichl, K.A., & Whitehead, J. (2016). A mindfulness-based social and emotional learning curriculum for school-aged children: The MindUP program. In K.A. Schoenert-Reichl & R.W. Roeser (Eds.), Handbook of mindfulness in education (pp.313-334). New York, NY: Springer. Ozawa-de Silva, B., & Dodson-Lavelle, B. (2011). An education of heart and mind: Practical and theoretical issues in teaching cognitive-based compassion training to children. Practical Matters 4, 1-28. Pace, T.W.W., Negi, L.T., Adame, D.D., Cole, S.P., Sivilli, T.I., Brown, T.D., Issa, M.J., & Raison, C.L. (2009). Effect of compassion meditation on neuroendocrine, innate immune and behavioral responses to psychosocial stress. Psychoneuroendocrinology 34, 87-98. Rovelli, C. (2017). Reality is not what it seems: The journey to quantum gravity. New York, NY: Riverhead.   Read Full Transcript   Transcript Jen: [00:40] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Your Parenting Mojo, which is on the topic of compassion. I actually need to thank Dr Tara Callahan, whom I interviewed way back in episode four of the show on encouraging creativity and artistic ability for bringing us this episode. She met today’s guest Dr Brendan Ozawa-de Silva at a conference and was kind enough to put us in touch. Dr Ozawa-de Silva is the Associate Director for the Emory University Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics, where he’s responsible for Emory’s Social, Emotional, and Ethical learning program, or SEE Learning; a worldwide kindergarten through twelfth grade educational curriculum based on compassion and secular ethics. He received his doctorates from Oxford and Emory universities as well as master’s degrees from Boston and Oxford Universities; I think you’ve actually got more degrees than I do. His chief interests lies in bringing secular ethics, which he calls the cultivation of basic human values into education and society. I’m excited to learn more today about his work and the benefits that it has for children. Welcome Brendan. Dr. de Silva: [01:42] Thank you Jen. Jen: [01:43] So can you start by telling us what are secular ethics, what do these have to do with social and emotional learning that parents might already be familiar with? Dr. de Silva: [01:51] So secular ethics means basic human values, so things like compassion, gratitude, sense of common humanity, a recognition of our responsibility to one another and to the environment. And if we look at the two words, the word secular means that we approach these ethics not on the basis of any one religion or ideology, but in a broad way on the basis of science, common Sense, common experience. So what we have in common with each other rather than what kind of separates us, which religion and ideology can do, but it doesn’t mean secular in the sense of anti-religious. So secular ethics doesn’t mean anything against religion, but it’s rather what we all have in common despite our religious national cultural differences. And then when we talk about ethics, it’s important to state that we