Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #620 From the Doctor's Desk

Transcript

#620 From the Doctor's Desk · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:03
Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
0:07
Speaker 1: time poor parent who just wants answers.
0:10
Speaker 2: Now doing the only strategies our kids are doing while
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Speaker 2: they're doing their chores is how they can get out
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Speaker 2: of them or get them done as fast as possible.
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Speaker 3: That might be executive function as well.
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Speaker 1: And now here's the stars of our show, my Mum
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Speaker 1: and dad Kylie.
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Speaker 3: We have a running joke that this particular episode of
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Speaker 3: the podcast is the one that you like the least,
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Speaker 3: but I've received feedback from the Happy Families Premium members
0:34
Speaker 3: group on Facebook that it just happens to be one
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Speaker 3: of the more popular ones among our listeners. How do
0:39
Speaker 3: you feel about that?
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Speaker 2: I don't know what to say to that. I just
0:43
Speaker 2: I don't know what to say to that.
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Speaker 3: So we're going to do it. We're going to keep
0:46
Speaker 3: doing it once a month. The Doctor's Desk. The idea
0:49
Speaker 3: for those of you who are knew to the podcast
0:50
Speaker 3: with the Doctor's Desk episodes is I come through the
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Speaker 3: letters research that has appeared, things to do with parenting,
0:56
Speaker 3: things to do with family, things to do with wellbeing children,
0:59
Speaker 3: even all on education, and essentially we play around with
1:03
Speaker 3: what the science is discovering what the scientists, I should say,
1:06
Speaker 3: the science doesn't discover anything. The science is not a
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Speaker 3: human it doesn't get to do the discovering. But scientists
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Speaker 3: are discovering stuff that I think is really relevant to
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Speaker 3: what it is to raise families and to be informed.
1:18
Speaker 3: Now that that's established that this is such an important
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Speaker 3: podcast episode on the Happy Families Agenda. Every third Thursday
1:25
Speaker 3: of the month, we get to talk about the doctor's desk.
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Speaker 3: We have three studies to play with today, Kylie, I
1:30
Speaker 3: don't mind which one we do first. I know that
1:32
Speaker 3: you're enthusiastic about all three of them. Where would you
1:35
Speaker 3: like to start?
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Speaker 2: I am actually quite curious about the school based mindfulness training.
1:40
Speaker 2: Oh yes, and the implications that it has on our children.
1:44
Speaker 3: Mindfulness has kind of been the buzzword in well being
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Speaker 3: for maybe a decade, maybe a touch more than that. Now.
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Speaker 3: People have been very excited about mindfulness. A few times
1:52
Speaker 3: on the podcast, I've highlighted that the research evidence isn't
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Speaker 3: as strong as the mindfulness apps and the mindfulness blogs
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Speaker 3: and the mindfulness gurus would tell us. Now, if mindfulness
2:00
Speaker 3: works for you, I'm not here to what's the phrase
2:03
Speaker 3: that I'm looking for to squash your pumpkin. That's very
2:06
Speaker 3: Halloween of you, squash pumpkin? Where did you get that from?
2:09
Speaker 3: It's Halloween, I've got pumpkins in my head. I was
2:12
Speaker 3: gonna say rain on your parade, but that's that's too boring.
2:15
Speaker 3: There's another phrase that I'm looking for, But whatever it is,
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Speaker 3: I don't want to I don't want to ruin your
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Speaker 3: life by saying mindfulness isn't everything that everyone's So you're.
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Speaker 2: Specifically talking to me right now because I've actually found
2:26
Speaker 2: that mindfulness practices has been a huge benefit to me.
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Speaker 3: Great, and if it's a benefit to you, there is
2:31
Speaker 3: research that says that it is a benefit to some people.
2:33
Speaker 3: And so if it works for you, keep doing it.
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Speaker 3: But if you one of those people like me who
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Speaker 3: tries to be mindful and about three seconds later says
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Speaker 3: this says just not working, It's okay. There's a whole
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Speaker 3: lot of research.
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Speaker 2: Says a labe. When we could attach to you.
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Speaker 3: Anyway, let me tell you about this study twenty researchers
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Speaker 3: from all over the UK and scific, specifically at Oxford University,
2:55
Speaker 3: the Oxford Department of Psychiatry. So we're talking about prestige
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Speaker 3: scrip of scientists who are very, very thoughtful and considered scientists,
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Speaker 3: including one of my favorite researchers, Sarah Jane Blakemore, a
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Speaker 3: neuropsych What this research looked at was school based mindfulness
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Speaker 3: training in early adolescents. And essentially they've run this training
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Speaker 3: with eight thousand, three hundred and seventy six eleven to
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Speaker 3: thirteen year olds.
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Speaker 2: So it's not a small study. This is a large
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Speaker 2: group of children.
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Speaker 3: It really is. And the reason that this matters is because, well,
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Speaker 3: number one, large studies work, but number two, the caliber
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Speaker 3: of the scientists involved in this study. This is a
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Speaker 3: carefully built study done the right way with the right researchers.
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Speaker 3: They've done all the pre approved work to make sure
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Speaker 3: that the study's done hypotheses, everything's done ahead of time,
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Speaker 3: so there's full transparency. Because psychology is studying from what's
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Speaker 3: called the replicability crisis. In other words, people have done
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Speaker 3: these studies. Everyone makes a big noise but and says, all,
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Speaker 3: my goodness, researchers have found this, and then no one
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Speaker 3: else can reproduce the study, which is a bit of
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Speaker 3: a challenge. It's not just psychology medicine, it's even had
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Speaker 3: some of these replicability challenges as well, I should say
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Speaker 3: that more slowly replicability challenges. And so anyway, what happens
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Speaker 3: with science now, really well done science is that good
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Speaker 3: scientists will pre register their studies. They'll tell everyone what
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Speaker 3: they're studying, who they're studying it with, what their hypotheses are,
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Speaker 3: what their methods are, and what they're expected outcomes are.
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Speaker 3: And then we get to marry up what their pre
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Speaker 3: registration details were with what came after. This is a
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Speaker 3: way of improving the quality of the scientific work that's
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Speaker 3: being done and reducing the likelihood of replicability challenges, but
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Speaker 3: also reducing the likelihood of scientific fraud and bizarre findings
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Speaker 3: that no one else can explain and no one else
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Speaker 3: can reproduce. Mindfulness, is that somebody stealing your idea?
4:44
Speaker 2: Though?
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Speaker 3: The great thing about science is it takes a long
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Speaker 3: time to do so. By the time you get to
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Speaker 3: the point that you're ready to pre register, you're pretty
4:51
Speaker 3: much about to run the experiment. The rest of it's
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Speaker 3: already done. It takes a long time to get all
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Speaker 3: this through. So it's been done, well, that's all I'm
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Speaker 3: trying to say. It's been done well, but mindfulness research
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Speaker 3: there are questions around some of the replicability issues in
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Speaker 3: this research. So Sarah Jane Blakemore and a range of
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Speaker 3: her nineteen of her colleagues from Oxford have all sat
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Speaker 3: down with eighty three hundred and seventy six students aged
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Speaker 3: eleven to thirteen who are participating in a randomized study
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Speaker 3: looking at whether or not a school based mindfulness training
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Speaker 3: program actually helps. And they look specifically at whether or
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Speaker 3: not it helps with depression, social emotional, behavioral functioning, and
5:30
Speaker 3: well being. And they looked at this these measures at
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Speaker 3: baseline before there'd been in the intervention. Then they also
5:37
Speaker 3: did a pre intervention look. So what they're essentially doing
5:40
Speaker 3: is ays saying, Okay, we're measuring it here, but now
5:42
Speaker 3: we're going to measure it again before anyone does anything,
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Speaker 3: and then we're going to measure after the intervention, and
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Speaker 3: then we're going to measure again a year down the track.
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Speaker 3: So we're talking longitudinal research with multiple measures looking at
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Speaker 3: everything that's going on here. And what they essentially found
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Speaker 3: was that a school based mindfulness training versus teaching as
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Speaker 3: us without the mindful of stuff, just regular teaching, resulted
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Speaker 3: in worse scores on risk of depression and well being
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Speaker 3: in students at risk of mental health problems at both
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Speaker 3: the post intervention phase and the one year follow up phase. Now,
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Speaker 3: the good news here is that the differences were small
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Speaker 3: and they were not clinically relevant. But what we do
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Speaker 3: need to worry about is that sometimes when we step
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Speaker 3: into an environment and we start running these interventions, we say, oh,
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Speaker 3: mindfulness is good for everyone, and we should just be
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Speaker 3: getting everyone to be more mindful. It actually isn't There
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Speaker 3: are some people, particularly those who are at risk of
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Speaker 3: having mental health challenges, who may go in exactly the
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Speaker 3: obsite direction to what we want here. This finding, I
6:41
Speaker 3: think is a really important one to highlight just how
6:43
Speaker 3: important it is that we move carefully when we're playing
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Speaker 3: around with interventions, especially when we look at whole of
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Speaker 3: population interventions. Rolling something out across an entire school may
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Speaker 3: not be in every student's best interest. In fact, it
6:56
Speaker 3: could be deleterious for some.
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Speaker 2: Since COVID, we've seen a massive increase in mental illness
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Speaker 2: in society in general, and especially in our kids. And
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Speaker 2: when you listen to a study like this, I wonder
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Speaker 2: if part of that decrease in the findings that they
7:13
Speaker 2: had after twelve months is a result of the labeling
7:17
Speaker 2: process that goes on as we try to educate our
7:21
Speaker 2: kids on what mental health looks like and what mental
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Speaker 2: illness looks like.
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Speaker 3: So anyway, that's that's that first study. We've probably talk
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Speaker 3: so much.
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Speaker 2: I need to get onto number two. Seriously.
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Speaker 3: Want to talk about.
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Speaker 2: There's another study that talks about the fact that the
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Speaker 2: more chores children get involved in, it's been linked to
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Speaker 2: better executive function. Great, what is executive function? Exactly?
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Speaker 3: Okay, so executive function, because I know.
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Speaker 2: That I'm really good at mopping the floor, but I
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Speaker 2: don't know if that means that I have a great
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Speaker 2: executive functions.
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Speaker 3: Well, well, you're not a child either. So the part
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Speaker 3: of your brain above your eyes, behind your forehead is
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Speaker 3: called the prefrontal quartet. That's where most of our executive
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Speaker 3: function occurs. Exactly.
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Speaker 2: I don't think anything happens behind my eyes.
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Speaker 3: Now above your eyes, not behind your eyes, behind your forehead.
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Speaker 3: So the idea of an executive is that it does
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Speaker 3: the planning, the regulating, the policy making, the strategizing. That's
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Speaker 3: what an executive does in a business, and in your brain,
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Speaker 3: the executive the prefront of cortex that does all of
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Speaker 3: your regulating, you're organizing thinking things through inhibiting planning. Those
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Speaker 3: are the kinds of things that we're talking about with
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Speaker 3: executive function.
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Speaker 2: I think the only strategies our kids are doing while
8:34
Speaker 2: they're doing their chores is how they can get out
8:39
Speaker 2: of them or get them done as fast as possible.
8:41
Speaker 3: That might be executive function as well. But essentially two
8:44
Speaker 3: hundred and seven Australian kids were involved in this. It
8:47
Speaker 3: was an Ossie study that was published in Occupational Therapy
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Speaker 3: Australia and these two hundred and seven families participated. Parents
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Speaker 3: and guardians of two hundred and seven kids aged five
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Speaker 3: through to thirteen were asked to complete a whole lot
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Speaker 3: of parent report questionnaires on the degree to which their
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Speaker 3: kids engage in household chores and how well they use
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Speaker 3: their brains executive function. And the results essentially showed that
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Speaker 3: engagement in what were called self care chores, things like
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Speaker 3: making themselves a meal and family care chores like making
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Speaker 3: someone else a meal or tiding up because the kitchen's
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Speaker 3: a mess, significantly predicted working memory and inhibition. And that
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Speaker 3: was after looking at the age the maturity experience of
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Speaker 3: the child, the gender of the child, and whether or
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Speaker 3: not there was or was not a disability or any
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Speaker 3: additional needs with child. Also thought this was interesting for
9:45
Speaker 3: families with a pet, there was no significant relationship between
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Speaker 3: engagement in pet care chores and executive function skills.
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Speaker 2: I'm off the hook. No more dogs than me.
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Speaker 3: That's it. I think we're done with pets. But this
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Speaker 3: is a really really interesting study set. It's not it's
10:00
Speaker 3: not an experimental study. It's a cross section or a
10:03
Speaker 3: correlational study. And when we look at correlations, what we're
10:07
Speaker 3: saying is that this thing happens and that thing happens
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Speaker 3: at the same time. So what the researchers are at
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Speaker 3: pains to highlight here, Kylie, is that the kids who
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Speaker 3: are doing the chores appear to have better executive functions.
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Speaker 3: But we don't know if it's the chores that are
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Speaker 3: helping the kids to have better executive functioning in the brain,
10:22
Speaker 3: or if it's the kids that have got better executive
10:24
Speaker 3: functioning in the brain that are more likely to do
10:26
Speaker 3: their chores. That makes sense, so it could be that
10:30
Speaker 3: if you see your kids and they're really responsible, they're
10:32
Speaker 3: good at inhibiting they're thoughtful, they're willing to do some
10:35
Speaker 3: work around the house. You actually load them up on
10:36
Speaker 3: chores because their executive function is on fire. It may
10:39
Speaker 3: not be that the chores are making them better with
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Speaker 3: their executive functioning. I think realistically it's probably a bit
10:45
Speaker 3: of both. But I thought that was a really interesting
10:47
Speaker 3: study and just a reminder for parents that it's okay
10:50
Speaker 3: to us the kids to do chores, but when you
10:52
Speaker 3: do that, make sure that you provide them with the
10:54
Speaker 3: scaffolding they need, give them the support, sit there and
10:57
Speaker 3: let them watch you do it, then do it with them,
10:59
Speaker 3: then stand by and supervise while they're doing it, and
11:01
Speaker 3: then finally, when they're able to do it on their own,
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Speaker 3: step away and let them do it like that, and be.
11:06
Speaker 2: Prepared to be told that you're the worst parent in
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Speaker 2: the world.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and lots of times I can't and it's too
11:11
Speaker 3: hard and you're unfair.
11:14
Speaker 2: Well, the last study today is that there is actually
11:17
Speaker 2: no evidence that siblings gender affect personality.
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Speaker 3: I love these research pieces, So things that look at
11:25
Speaker 3: birth order, things that look at gender and personality, all
11:28
Speaker 3: these kinds of things really delight me every time I
11:31
Speaker 3: come across them, because They essentially say stop looking for
11:34
Speaker 3: things that aren't there. And the data again is saying
11:36
Speaker 3: stop looking for something that's not there. When it comes
11:38
Speaker 3: to birth order, it really is not particularly predictive of anything.
11:42
Speaker 3: This idea that firstborns are this and second borns are
11:44
Speaker 3: that and third borns or whatever, the research just doesn't
11:48
Speaker 3: support it. It's the same when we look at things
11:51
Speaker 3: like this one and that is like you said, does
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Speaker 3: the gender of your sibling affect your personality? So we've
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Speaker 3: got nine countries participate paiding in this study, twelve large
12:02
Speaker 3: representative surveys with eighty five thousand, eight hundred and eighty
12:06
Speaker 3: seven participants. When we're talking about a big study, we've
12:09
Speaker 3: got the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Mexico, China,
12:12
Speaker 3: and Indonesia in this study. So it's cross cultural. It's really, really,
12:17
Speaker 3: really big. And essentially the researchers had to look at
12:20
Speaker 3: the personality traits of the extent that kids can tolerate, risk,
12:26
Speaker 3: their trust, their patients, where they think things that happen
12:30
Speaker 3: to them come from is it inside me? Or is
12:32
Speaker 3: it stuff happening in the environment. And the Big five
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Speaker 3: personality factors which are openness to new experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness,
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Speaker 3: and neuroticism.
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Speaker 2: Okay, so I would have thought a much more interesting
12:44
Speaker 2: study would have been to see whether or not parents'
12:47
Speaker 2: personalities actually impact children's as opposed to your siblings.
12:53
Speaker 3: It's really interesting. I haven't found I haven't looked for
12:56
Speaker 3: a study like that. I'd be curious to see whether
12:58
Speaker 3: it exists. But certainly when it comes to birth or effects,
13:00
Speaker 3: and now siblings gender and the impact that that has
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Speaker 3: on personality, the research is essentially found no meaningful causal
13:08
Speaker 3: effects of the gender of the next younger sibling, and
13:10
Speaker 3: no associations with the gender of the next older sibling.
13:13
Speaker 3: Given the high statistical power and consistent results in the
13:15
Speaker 3: overall sample, they say and the relevant subsamples, our results
13:19
Speaker 3: suggest that siblings gender does not systematically affect personality. And
13:24
Speaker 3: I just experience tells me that regardless of how many
13:28
Speaker 3: siblings you've got, what age they are, whether they're close
13:30
Speaker 3: to you in age, or whether they've got the same
13:33
Speaker 3: gender or a different gender as you, your personality is
13:36
Speaker 3: your personality.
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Speaker 2: We only have girls in our home, six of them
13:40
Speaker 2: to play with, and the reality is each of them,
13:44
Speaker 2: like literally, each of them is their own person totally.
13:48
Speaker 2: They're not influenced by the person above them or below
13:52
Speaker 2: them in any way, shape or form. We've got a
13:55
Speaker 2: kid who actually couldn't care less what she wears and
14:00
Speaker 2: matches her clothes and mismatches her clothes and just is
14:05
Speaker 2: not concerned about that stuff at all. We've got another
14:07
Speaker 2: kid who absolutely is very concerned about how she looks
14:12
Speaker 2: and what she wears. We've got another kid who is
14:15
Speaker 2: just so eclectic in her you know, kind of her music.
14:19
Speaker 2: Tastes like they're all so different.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, they are, And I don't know why that surprises us,
14:26
Speaker 3: because we're so different to our siblings.
14:28
Speaker 2: I think, if anything, the more time you spend with people,
14:32
Speaker 2: the more you become like them.
14:34
Speaker 3: Sure I'd go with that. Yeah, you know.
14:35
Speaker 2: So we talk about you become the average of the
14:37
Speaker 2: five people you spend the most time with. And so
14:40
Speaker 2: when you think about families, if you are close knit
14:44
Speaker 2: and you spend lots of time together, then you are
14:46
Speaker 2: going to take on some of the traits of those people.
14:49
Speaker 2: But that happens over time and it's not a result
14:53
Speaker 2: of gender.
14:55
Speaker 3: We really hope that this doctor's desk episode has been delightful, Hylie.
15:00
Speaker 3: For someone who doesn't like this episode, you sure didn't
15:01
Speaker 3: get involved. You sure had a lot to say about it.
15:03
Speaker 3: I'm just putting it out there.
15:04
Speaker 2: I can't let you steal all the one light.
15:06
Speaker 3: Well tomorrow, with older better Tomorrow, we've learned something up
15:09
Speaker 3: that's really special and it's all about you, Kylie, So
15:11
Speaker 3: I'm looking forward to that. The Happy Family's podcast, Though,
15:13
Speaker 3: is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce
15:16
Speaker 3: is our executive producer and for more and folve about
15:18
Speaker 3: making your family happier, especially the hot Mess Summit. For
15:21
Speaker 3: any family that's a hot mess and wants to be
15:23
Speaker 3: less of a hot mess, please visit us on our
15:25
Speaker 3: Facebook page dotr Justin Colson's Happy Families, or at happy
15:28
Speaker 3: families dot com dot au