In this episode Jenny discusses with Dr Kathleen Smith the challenges and opportunities for parents managing fears and anxieties.

What are the challenges of managing anxiety about our kids? What are the opportunities and benefits of parents working on managing their fears? 

Kathleen Smith is a licensed therapist and mental health writer who lives in Washington, DC. She has written for popular publications such as Slate, Salon, New York Magazine, Lifehacker, Bustle, and Counseling Today, among many others. She is an associate faculty member at the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family and hosts the show Family Matters, a production of the University of the District of Columbia.

Resources:

• https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Isnt-Terrible-Insecurities-Interrupt/dp/0316492531
• https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B01HYP9SJ2/about

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In this episode, Jenny Brown will be in discussion with Lauren Errington sharing stories of working with parents who are worried about 1 or more of their children.

Lauren is the Executive Director of the Family Systems Institute Sydney. She also lectures at Charles Sturt University and has a clinical practice at the Family Systems Practice Network.

The stories shared will reveal what parents gain from observing their interactions – Lauren and Jenny will reflect on learning to observe themselves in their own families.

Links:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/anzf.1481
https://www.thefsi.com.au

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In this episode, Jenny Brown interviews renowned Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist Dr Annemaree Bickerton about her work supporting parents managing their child or adolescent's strong, and often dangerous, emotions and behaviours. 

Listen to how parents can be a lighthouse for children in stormy times. They listen rather than fix and allow the child to learn to surf the challenging waves of life.

To find out about the Staying Connected Courses: https://www.islhd.health.nsw.gov.au/services-clinics/family-and-carer-mental-health-program-0/staying-connected-when-emotions-run-high

To watch the video mentioned – This is an excellent resource!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_B61YifyrM

To read about the safety first model 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/anzf.1055

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In this podcast, Jenny Brown interviews Susy Lee, prize-winning author, speaker, and educator. They discuss Susy's prize-winning book 'Raising Kids Who Care: Practical Conversations for Exploring Stuff That Matters, Together'.

Susy writes:
'In our complex world, we need to be aware of looming pitfalls and be intentional in helping kids navigate their way to compassion and wonder, driven by values and purpose.'  This path of conversations leads to amazing hope.

In this conversation, Jenny explores Susy's thoughts on how parents can influence the development of a kind and caring child without making a change project out of the child.

Susy writes that 'children primarily learn ethical behaviour by watching their parents.' Jenny asks her what she thinks is the impact of what parents care about and how they live out. 

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Parenting doesn’t end when a child leaves school. In fact, parenting can become even more complex with young adults, especially if they are struggling to manage adult responsibilities. 

In this podcast, Dr Jenny Brown talks about ways parents can be a resource to a young adult child who is navigating an increasingly complicated and demanding life transition. 

Using a case example, she highlights the value of parents staying connected but not over-invested in their adult child. Creating space for building independence and pulling back from accommodating a child’s under-functioning is critical. This can be challenging to shift for the parent as it is for the young adult child; hence, parents need to own the adjustments they choose to make and not just follow the advice and opinions of others.

Some helpful family systems links on the topic:

When Your Young Adult with “Failure to Launch” Won’t Get Help: Survival Tips for Parents Who Aren’t Done Parenting

https://www.rtor.org/2017/10/24/failure-to-launch-part-4/

Young Adults Leaving Home – you tube interviews

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v4mkHeu--Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eya61VCm82g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGYmxUblcD4

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In this podcast, Jenny Brown explores the challenges of parenting Special Needs children – neurodiverse kids or children with a biological impairment of some kind. She interviews Nicole Clarke, who is both a mother of a child with Autism and a school counsellor. 

It is helpful to consider if the same principles of working on the parent rather than the child apply to special needs kids. A systems view suggests that any added stress and anxiety can be relieved by a parent by making a more intense project out of finding help and treatments for a child. Yet, at the same time, this extra focus on the child can reduce the child’s development capacities. The child becomes attuned to a parent’s increasing involvement which can trigger more dysregulation. 

It is so very hard for parents of children who appear to be neurologically different in their capacities to socialise, empathise and control behaviours, not to get swept along by the pull to add multiple treatments to the child’s life. 

Nicole speaks of the value of working to be less intense as a parent despite the extra challenges. She talks about the treatments focus on getting your child to be different as opposed to accepting who they are and reducing fear about the future. 

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Adolescents present unique challenges for parents. For example, the reactive push for independence can be triggering for parents. In this podcast, Jenny reveals how parent efforts to correct behaviours can inadvertently reinforce a conflict cycle that can fuel a teen's physiological reward system: (sensation seeking). An overview of adolescent brain development makes sense of this reward system. 

The podcast invites parents to consider two typical cycles of interaction: Escalating fighting with a teen, with a parent staying stuck in the conflict, believing that if they "lose", they are a poor parent leader. The other is the cycle of escalating rescuing, and accommodating. Jenny presents ways parents can disengage from these unhelpful cycles. The parent's effort is to contribute to an environment that enhances the teen's development of thoughtful self-responsibility rather than trying to correct their behaviours, thereby giving them more fuel to react to. 

The perspective of family systems thinking is not about changing an individual but changing the emotional/relational environment in the family. The good news is that It takes just one parent to adjust themselves in ways that reduce the intensity in their relationships. More constructive than convincing an adolescent to change in the short term.

Links

• Sensation seeking: Steinberg L. A Social Neuroscience Perspective on Adolescent Risk-Taking. Dev Rev. 2008 Mar;28(1):78-106. doi: 10.1016/j.dr.2007.08.002. PMID: 18509515; PMCID: PMC2396566.

• Flexibility in parenting interactions: Branje, S. (2018), Development of Parent–Adolescent Relationships: Conflict Interactions as a Mechanism of Change. Child Dev Perspect, 12: 171-176. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12278

• Understanding teenage brain development:

https://raisingchildren.net.au/pre-teens/development/understanding-your-pre-teen/brain-development-teens

https://www.startingblocks.gov.au/other-resources/factsheets/brain-development-in-children

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In this podcast, Jenny talks about the pre-teenage phase, parents' worries about school performance, and the impacts of excessive screen time. How can parents respond to these issues without an anxious worry focus? What is the effect of parents representing themselves to their children instead of trying to fix or change their children? You will hear an example of busy working parents of an 11-year-old who is falling behind at school. Their interactions in reaction to their worries provide clues about what is and isn't helpful in their parenting responses. Some research findings around helping children with language development reveal that children can learn to love learning if parents are curious about the process of their activities rather than fixating on quick results. When adults sit alongside their child and speak less…. the child begins to speak more. There is also some discussion of parents' responses to the vexed issue of screen time. There are guidelines to be found for parents about what is and isn't healthy for children's use of devices. However, parents are cautioned about pushing their child into an ideal, thereby escalating non-constructive tensions. 

Podcast notes: 

• Dr Susan Colmar's research  University of Sydney Faculty of Education & Social Work. A parent-based book-reading intervention for disadvantaged children with language difficulties https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0265659013507296
• Screen time guidelines

https://aifs.gov.au/resources/short-articles/too-much-time-screens-screen-time-effects-and-guidelines-children-and

• Screen Use apps

https://www.verywellfamily.com/best-parental-control-apps-4779963#toc-best-for-budget-google-family-link

https://families.google/familylink/

• Safety issues and children's screen use – online child grooming

https://www.safeonsocial.com/post/online-child-grooming-my-personal-experience

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Today's podcast discusses parenting in the early school years. In particular, how parent's managed themselves with a shy child. The interactions presented highlight a child's separation anxiety in the context of reluctance to attend school. The fist interaction reveals the familiar worry cycle parents easily find themselves in. The more the parents focus on her worry about the child not coping at school, the more she focuses on rescuing her son. The child participates in this worry cycle with increasingly dependent reactions. The second interaction presents a calmer parent who focuses on what they bring to the exchange. The podcast explores the topic of children's temperament and the effect on parent protectiveness. Also explored is some fascinating research from animal and human studies on the value of regular exposure to stress.

The message for parents is that parent separation anxiety can be just as natural as a child's separation anxiety. The good news is that it is within the parent's control to address their sensitivities to their child, to tolerate their child's exposure to appropriate life stress and, in turn to promote their child's stress management for life. 

Research links:

Kagans Inhibited and Uninhibited Temperaments

https://www.euroformhealthcare.biz/temperament-traits/kagans-inhibited-and-uninhibited-temperaments.html

Exposure to frequent separations.

Lyons DM, Parker KJ, Schatzberg AF. Animal models of early life stress: implications for understanding resilience. Dev Psychobiol. 2010 Nov;52(7):616-24. doi: 10.1002/dev.20500. PMID: 20957724; PMCID: PMC6716163.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6716163/

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In this series Dr Jenny Brown conveys how each phase of a child's development presents parents with opportunities to step back and consider their part in interactions – to see what is helping to promote gradual independence and self-regulation rather than unintentionally fuelling reactivity or dependence. With toddlers the challenge is managing our responses to their huge learning spurt and push towards independence. This podcast describes 2 different parent toddler interactions involving a toddler not getting what they want. What is in a parent’s control to contribute to a toddler’s increased capacity to delay gratification?

Research links mentioned in podcast
Luo, Y., Pattanakul, D. Infant expectations of instant or delayed gratification. Sci Rep 10, 19081 (2020).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-76136-9
The Stanford marshmallow experiment- a study on delayed gratification in 1972 led by psychologist Walter Mischel
https://www.simplypsychology.org/marshmallow-test.html

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