Parental Development

This episode addresses parenting and discipline using pain and physical punishment.  The research is very clear about how physical punishment alters brain structures and functioning and causes kids to feel unsafe and as though they have to survive these interactions.

If you're not clear on typical chlidhood brain development, start here!

Spanking may lead to short term behavior change but doesn't teach kids what to do differently. You can look at research studies here, here, and here to give clear information about the impacts physical discipline has on kids. One of these articles note: "spanking is a euphemism for a socially acceptable form of hitting that constitutes parent-to-child violence ."

When kids are punished through physical pain, their brains send signals as though they are in danger and releases stress hormones for them to survive the interaction. They are not able to change this reaction just because it's their parent who is the one hurting them as opposed to a stranger.  When this stress response happens over and over again, this can lead to behavioral and emotional changes, due to the stress hormones that overwhelm their system.

One of the key factors that causes stress to become toxic is the lack of a supportive adult, helping you manage the distress you are experiencing. If the adult who is supposed to help you regulate but is also the source of your stress and distress, this causes confusion and damage over time.

Our goal in this episode is for parents to have all the information and while we understand this is hard to hear and may cause defensive feelings, it's that important to us that we present the research in ways that protects our kids as much as possible.

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This episode talks through really challening behaviors including biting, hitting, and spitting.  Most of us understand this behavior is somewhat normal but often don't know how to respond in a way that is helpful.

If you're not familiar with typical childhood brain development, go back and listen to this episode. This is important when thinking about many of the negative behaviors our kids display in early childhood.  Our young kids are unable to take the perspective of others, which means they can't understand that just because something hurts them it will hurt others if they do it to them. 

Kids explore their world a lot when they are very young by putting things in their mouths, which means biting is developmentally appropriate and often a way to explore.  Other reasons kids may bite are:

• Teething
• Exploring
• Attention
• Control
• Overwhelm
• Anger

Young kids are often not intentionally hurting other people, even if they laugh after the behavior.  As kids age they should quickly grow out of biting, and when older kids are biting, it should be seen as a regressive behavior and a sign of some other feelings or thoughts. 

What can you do if your kid is biting others?

• Attempt to intervene before the biting happens
• Give alternatives to bite
• Impose a boundary: "I can't let you bite, so I'm going to put you down/move you away/leave the park."
• Monitor your own reaction

Believing punishment is the only way to get kids to stop biting misses the fact that this is a developmental stage that simply needs to be experienced.

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This episode talks through a really sensitive subject, and Beka and Leah do their best to have an honest conversation about the challenges of being a single parent, and how to navigate some of those situations.

If abuse is happening in your relationship, your children know more than you think they do, and there is very clear research about the impact this can have on children. Until everyone is safe in their relationships, and able to get out of survival mode, no additional changes can happen.

Regardless of the nature of the coparenting relationship, kids' behavior will often regress when they return home. This is particularly true if the contact with the other parent is infrequent or unpredictable or there are inconsistencies among the two environments. This regression can look like defiance, oppositionality, increased emotionality, bedwetting, clingy behavior, etc.

We often hear moms say, 'It's my responsiblity to make sure my kids have a good relationship with their dad.' We disagree with this statement completely, believing a parent's relationship with their children is their responsiblity. Moms cannot bear the weight of their children's relationship with their dad. Here are some areas we think are the responsiblity of the mother in this scenario:

1. Avoid speaking negatively about the other parent
2. Validate their feelings about the other parent - positive and negative
3. Allow contact when it's safe

When looking at various situations, ask yourself, 'what is mine to take? what is my work to do?' The behavior and response of another person is never yours to take and is not something you have control over.

How do I protect my child from feeling lost/rejected/abandoned/left?
You can't.

As a mother, this feels unacceptable, and all we want to do is protect them and take their hurt away. But in many situations, they are rejected and left, and their feelings related to this situation are valid and just have to be processed and worked through.

So what can you do?

1. Respond honestly
2. Validate and allow them to feel everything
3. Surround them with strong, loving men to help fill that role

If you are their safe person, you will get the worst of their behavior. This doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. It means you are safe, while they can't feel any of their anger, frustration, or confusion with their dad. Their relationship with their dad is too fragile and uncertain and our kids are too desperate to keep the relationship and make their dad stay, so you, as their mom are the only one who can take it.
 
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Parents often ask if they should let their kids quit sports, clubs, lessons, etc. We fear that if we let them quit they'll be quitters forever and never learn to work hard. In this episode, Leah and Beka talk through their thoughts on this and ways to teach these skills.

All skills are taught:
Gradually over time
Through Multiple repetitions
With Several different inputs

It's important, as always to chase the why when your kids' behavior changes. Understanding WHY your kid wants to quit something, and forcing them to continue doing it anyway sends the message their reason doesn't matter.

We often worry that by letting our kids quit, they'll never learn how to be uncomfortable, push through hard things, fulfill their commitments, or be determined. There are ways to teach our kids determination and commitment without forcing them to keep going when they want to quit. We want them to listen to their bodies and honor how they're feeling. There will be time to teach them skills as they age.

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When our kids fight with one another it can be so draining and super challenging to know what to do in those moments. This episode talks through ideas for how to intervene and help our kids develop skills.

Our kids' first exposure to developing social skills is their relationship with their siblings. This gives them the opportunity to practice their skills in conflict resolution,  apologizing, empathy, etc. This means that the fighting our kids engage in with one another is completely normal and can even be healthy, as they being to practice and learn these new skills.

When our kids fight, it's our opportunity to teach skills, so we shouldn't intervene every time. You might say something like, "You guys need to figure it out." This is really challenging and triggers many of us as parents pretty quickly.

Punishment often doesn't work to address the issue with fighting, because it doesn't teach our kids new skills to avoid fighting with their sibling. Many times fighting is an attempt to get attention from a caregiver, communicating they need help, attunement, attention, etc. 

Be careful to not always intervene for the younger/smaller child, to avoid identifying the older one as the bad, mean, problematic one. It can also put the younger child into a victim role, causing them to cause mistreatment to get caretaking and attention from parents.

It's important to avoid seeing our kids as manipulative, which usually only means they're doing what they need to do to get their needs met. We have often trained them to know how to get what they want, which can feel like we are being manipulated, but it's simply them getting their needs met. We always want to chase the function behind the behavior instead of focusing on the behavior itself.

If fighting is  increasing your home, you can try cooperative games, like this, this, or this. You might also think about spending extra time with each other, putting activities in the car to keep them occupied, listening to recorded stories, etc.

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Mental health has been thrust into the national conversation over the last few weeks, often leading to suggestions, ideas, and conclusions from people who do not work in the field and have no experience with the system. This episode does not involve much about parenting, but Leah provides some education and insight into the system and possible solutions moving forward.

There is a difference between mental health and mental illness. We all need to focus on our mental health and wellness, and how we feel, manage stress, emotions, and behaviors, while mental illness suggests a formal diagnosis and an identifiable issue that should be addressed and/or treated.

Currently there are not enough mental health providers to meet the need for the mental health of kids and adults in our communities.  There are also issues related to insurance - covering mental health benefits, low reimbursement rates, making decisions about treatment, etc.

As mental health providers, we are not responsible simply for public safety. The number one consideration as a mental health provider is confidentiality and it trumps almost everything, making decisions about hospitalization, calling the police, etc. extremely difficult and nuanced. Safety is one of the only things that trumps confidentiality, but only in the moment and only in very specific instances.

No matter what our proposed solutions are to these big issues, it's important that we remember that we all have the same goals and have positive intentions.

Leah's opinion is that the majority of these violent, aggressive kids and adults are the result of significant attachment disruptions, including generational ruptures with limited repair. This leads to a need for power and control, which often leads to aggression toward animals and young children. It's not helpful to refer to these people as 'monsters' or 'evil,' because they didn't start this way, and until we focus on how that developed and got to that point through their experiences, we miss the opportunity to make changes.

These types of conversations do not help fight the stigma associated with mental illness, because the majority of people with a mental health diagnosis are not violent or aggressive. There are some potential solutions or improvements that could be made within our current systems to start this work, but the conversations are really hard. Hopefully this episode gives some places for us to start.

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It's been a really challenging week for all of us, and many of us are questioning how to talk to our kids about some of the really hard things going on in our world. This episode talks through some of those concerns and gives some thoughts and suggestions on how to approach this.

Like most things, the degree to which you talk to your kids about certain topics or situations depends on their age. If you do decide to start a conversation, here are some suggestions and things to think through:

1.  Ask them what they know - this will let you know what information they have and what their perspective is about the situation, which can help you know where to start, what information you need to share or clarify, and how you can best support them.
2. Don't assume your kid's silence means they're ok or they haven't heard anything about the situation
3. Follow their lead - their behavior will tell you when they're done, when they've had enough, and when they're ready to talk more

Specifics of these conversations can be so tricky, and it's important for us to approach them in a safe, supportive way. We discuss some additional suggestions and things to consider:

1. Manage your own feelings - it's ok to show emotion, but we also need to remain steady
2. Validate their feelings - feelings, thoughts, responses - even if they sound inappropriate or unhealthy
3. Be honest and answer all their questions - once you open the window, you need to answer as many of their questions as you can. You can't shut down the conversation as it starts to get hard
4. Insert Cues of Safety - focus on schedules, positive interactions, attunement, connected relationships, etc.

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These statistics about our kids' relationship with food and their bodies are heartbreaking, and led Beka and Leah to talk about food and how to use different tools to promote healthy relationships with food, body autonomy, and interoception. 

It's important that we don't use food to motivate, reward, or soothe our kids, so those messages don't get hard wired as they enter adolescence and adulthood. 

It's also important that we build our kids' interoception, which includes:

• Letting them eat when they're hungry
• Letting them stop eating when they're full
• Teaching them to notice how their body feels when they eat different foods

This episode also walks through ways to promote healthy messages and relationships with food, such as:

• Food is not good or bad
• We don't talk about other people's bodies
• Don't comment on what/how much kids eat
• Let natural consequences happen to teach healthy habits

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As parents, we often beat ourselves up when we experience a rupture in our relationship with our children. This episode explores the idea that ruptures are inevitable and can even be healthy for relationships, because they give us opportunities for repair.

Attunement is one of the main goals in this type of parenting, and according to Dan Siegel, "when we attune with others we allow our own internal state to shift, to come to resonate with the inner world of another." Ruptures, or failing to attune to our kids, can be big or small in relationships, and cannot be avoided. It's important that we teach our kids that ruptures can be survived and how to do them appropriately.

It's important to differentiate repairs from 1. giving the silent treatment, 2. acting like nothing happened, 3. demanding an apology, or anything else. Repairs have to be directly related to the rupture that happened, and should involve an apology on our part, and a recognition that we have fallen out of attunement.

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We all want to raise honest kids and when they lie it can be really hard to know how to respond or what to do!

Lying is a very normal part of child development and there are lots of reasons they engage in this type of behavior. Here are some reasons kids are dishonest:
1. They can't separate fantasy from reality
2. They're trying to relate to others
3. They're projecting their feelings onto other people
4. It doesn't feel safe to tell the truth

Ultimately, we can't control what comes out of our kids' mouths, even if it's dishonest. Making someone admit they lied does not then make them be honest. Our kids' behavior is always trying to communicate something, even when they're lying. What are they trying to tell us?

If we want our kids to be honest with us, we have to let them know our relationship won't change, even when they're dishonest.

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