Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #706 Gentle Parenting: Is It a Fad or Fabulous?

Transcript

#706 Gentle Parenting: Is It a Fad or Fabulous? · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:03
Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families Podcast.
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Speaker 2: It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just answers. Now. Hello,
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Speaker 2: it's doctor Justin Colson. Welcome to another Happy Families podcast today.
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Speaker 2: A guest on the podcast that I have been following
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Speaker 2: from a distance for ages, I'd like to say a decade.
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Speaker 2: It may be something like that, a bit more, a
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Speaker 2: bit less, but this is somebody who I just think
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Speaker 2: gets it when it comes to parenting. And I finally
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Speaker 2: pluck up the courage to get my team to send
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Speaker 2: an email through and I got an instant yes, A
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Speaker 2: warm and enthusiastic, a positive instant yes, which was such
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Speaker 2: a thrill. Doctor Mona Dela Hook is an author, a
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Speaker 2: psychologist and has written a book called Brain Body Parenting
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Speaker 2: when it comes to compassion and kindness and helping parents
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Speaker 2: to get this stuff right in ways that we can
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Speaker 2: all feel good about. I don't know anyone who does
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Speaker 2: this as well as doctor Dellahook. So Mona, welcome the
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Speaker 2: Happy Families Podcast, and thank you so much for joining
1:03
Speaker 2: me for this conversation today.
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Speaker 1: Oh Justin, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you
1:07
Speaker 1: for inviting me.
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Speaker 2: I want to start off by talking about your book
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Speaker 2: because it really is beautiful, but it ignited something of
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Speaker 2: a controversy around the idea of gentle parenting. Now, I
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Speaker 2: know that your ideas on this are kind of well,
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Speaker 2: quite similar to mine, but can you tell me a
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Speaker 2: bit about the controversy and what the deal is with
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Speaker 2: this whole gentle parenting thing that, thanks to TikTok primarily
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Speaker 2: has just exploded around the world in the last eighteen
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Speaker 2: to twenty four months. Yes.
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Speaker 1: Well, it's so interesting to see people's reactions to books
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Speaker 1: that talk about compassion first, right, and how relationships are
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Speaker 1: like the foundation, the bedrock of child development. So when
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Speaker 1: certain people heard the word gentle parenting, and it's not
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Speaker 1: just my book, There's been quite a few books in
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Speaker 1: the last you know, fib or so years on this
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Speaker 1: kind of new way of parenting as opposed to maybe
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Speaker 1: what we would think about as traditional parenting. Right, So
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Speaker 1: we might think of traditional parenting as more authoritarian, and
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Speaker 1: that would include maybe the parents as the ultimate experts,
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Speaker 1: and it might include punishments or rewards, but it would
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Speaker 1: kind of focus on behaviors, on surface behaviors, and parents
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Speaker 1: kind of judging behaviors is good or bad, and then
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Speaker 1: having a certain response to those behaviors, and so the
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Speaker 1: word gentle parenting really doesn't describe a certain parenting style.
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Speaker 1: I think it's more of a catch all phrase for
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Speaker 1: this new type of parenting. And as you know, coming
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Speaker 1: out of the positive psychology movement in the nineteen nineties,
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Speaker 1: positive parenting has come on board. And that is I
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Speaker 1: think a reaction that parents have to maybe the way
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Speaker 1: they were raised or their grandparents were raised right, which
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Speaker 1: wasn't very steeped in a knowledge of child development and
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Speaker 1: emotional literacy and all that good stuff. One article that
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Speaker 1: was written about gentle parenting said something like, so are
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Speaker 1: these gentle parents never saying no? And are these gentle
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Speaker 1: parents letting their kids throw rocks at cars as they
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Speaker 1: drive by?
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Speaker 2: You know?
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Speaker 1: And there is I think this misconception that gentle parenting
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Speaker 1: is parenting that is coddling or never or doesn't have
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Speaker 1: any sort of boundaries, and that's really not the case.
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Speaker 1: But people I think who are concerned that parenting approaches
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Speaker 1: don't have a level of boundaries and parents, as the
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Speaker 1: guide and as the authority, mistake that word. So it's
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Speaker 1: not coddling in my mind opinion and the research that
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Speaker 1: I'm particularly interested in and wrote my book about is
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Speaker 1: actually sub a topic of gentle parenting, which is responsive
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Speaker 1: parenting that's linked in the literature to a lot of
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Speaker 1: great things, a lot of great pieces of development, especially resilience.
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Speaker 2: When we look at this idea of gentle parenting, people
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Speaker 2: seem to push against it because of the concept of permissiveness. Right,
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Speaker 2: if you're going to be gentle, that means you can say, oh,
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Speaker 2: that's okay, sweetheart, it's just fine, don't worry about it.
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Speaker 2: You can do whatever you like. And I look after
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Speaker 2: you don't worry about that. And I like this distinction
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Speaker 2: that you draw between the concept of being a gentle parent,
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Speaker 2: which I also chafe at. I don't find that helpful,
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Speaker 2: and this idea of being a responsive parent. Can you
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Speaker 2: describe a little bit more about responsive parenting and what
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Speaker 2: that looks like, what that means.
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Speaker 1: Yes, And I'm glad you brought the word up permissive,
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Speaker 1: because that's another that's another myth I think that's around there,
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Speaker 1: that if you're a gentle parent, that you're permissive, that
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Speaker 1: you don't say no. Right, So, yeah, and absolutely, you
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Speaker 1: know if you don't say no, that would be a
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Speaker 1: problem because children Obviously, toddlers can't raise themselves, and children
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Speaker 1: do need guidance. The world of responsive care and responsive
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Speaker 1: parenting has to do with customizing our interactions to what
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Speaker 1: each child needs in real time. What does that mean.
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Speaker 1: It means reading a child's cues, looking at what we
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Speaker 1: call their nervous system, which is your brain and body
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Speaker 1: are always creating behaviors. Behaviors don't come out of nowhere.
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Speaker 1: They're very meaningful and they mean something. And what you know,
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Speaker 1: challenging behaviors are with many parents are concerned about behavioral
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Speaker 1: challenges or oppositional defiance, those kinds of things. What we
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Speaker 1: know now is that those kinds of behaviors are generally
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Speaker 1: stress responses in the nervous system. So responsive parenting looks
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Speaker 1: thinks of behaviors as the tip of the iceberg, and
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Speaker 1: we go below the waterline and we really understand. We
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Speaker 1: take time to understand what's the child experiencing right now,
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Speaker 1: what's driving this behavior, and then we go for that
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Speaker 1: supporting that at that level, not just saying, oh, you're misbehaving.
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Speaker 1: You know, you have to go to your room, or
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Speaker 1: you you know, you lose out on dessert tonight, something
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Speaker 1: like that.
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Speaker 2: When I talk about these kinds of ideas with parents, Mona,
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Speaker 2: and I'm sure this happens to you as well, parents
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Speaker 2: will say, well, that's all well and good that there's
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Speaker 2: some sort of unmit need driving the behavior. You're telling
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Speaker 2: me that I'm supposed to figure out what the need is,
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Speaker 2: but I don't want to make the need because this
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Speaker 2: is not going to reinforce the bad behavior. A lot
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Speaker 2: of parents will actually see this as being another form
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Speaker 2: of permissiveness or a form of reinforcement. What's your response
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Speaker 2: when parents say that kind of thing.
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Speaker 1: I don't actually believe that all misbehaviors are unmet needs.
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Speaker 1: So I very much appreciate the work of Ross Green,
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Speaker 1: and he says that all misbehaviors are unmet needs. But
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Speaker 1: here's the different lens for that. Agitated behaviors and extreme
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Speaker 1: misbehaviors are evidence of nervous system distress and are not
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Speaker 1: purposefully chosen by the child. So they are subconsciously driven,
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Speaker 1: meaning those behaviors are instincts and they're automatic. Those are
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Speaker 1: called body up or bottom up behaviors, And so we
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Speaker 1: have to understand that there's a difference between top down behaviors,
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Speaker 1: Like if a child sneaks into your bedroom and takes
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Speaker 1: your iPad and lies about it. Okay, that's a top
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Speaker 1: down behavior. But a tantrum or a child running out
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Speaker 1: into the street, or a child spitting or kicking or
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Speaker 1: hitting or say I hate you, you're the worst. You know,
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Speaker 1: I want you to die. I mean those are guess what,
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Speaker 1: They're not purposeful, They're instinctual, and the child doesn't know it.
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Speaker 1: So this is kind of the paradigm shift I'm talking
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Speaker 1: about in brain body parenting, is that we have to
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Speaker 1: understand what we're dealing with. If we're dealing with a
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Speaker 1: purposeful misbehavior, then that takes us down one road. If
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Speaker 1: we're dealing with an automatic stress response, that takes us
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Speaker 1: down another road. So when parents say I don't have
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Speaker 1: the time to become a details that, I get it.
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Speaker 1: You don't have to be a detective. All you have
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Speaker 1: to do is stop and observe what's happening on your
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Speaker 1: child's body. We call them behavioral biomarkers, and that's going
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Speaker 1: to give you a clue. You can do that in
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Speaker 1: three seconds or less.
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Speaker 2: So give me a practical example. I've got a child
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Speaker 2: who's screaming, I don't want to go to bed. I'm
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Speaker 2: not tired, you don't know anything. I hate you. You're
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Speaker 2: the worst pairing in the world. Because they're three and
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Speaker 2: they're excited to hang around with their eight year old
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Speaker 2: brother or sister who's having all the fun and staying
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Speaker 2: up an extra thirty minutes. Yeah, what's the responsive parenting approach?
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Speaker 2: What's the response to a bottom up nervous system explosion
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Speaker 2: that's leading this challenge because it's so different to that
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Speaker 2: traditional way of having so different.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so we really quickly take into account three things.
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Speaker 1: Number one is that development of self regulation. So we
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Speaker 1: know that this three year old does not have something
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Speaker 1: called self regulation.
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Speaker 2: And adults that struggle with that so.
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Speaker 1: And plenty of adults. That's a steep learning curve. So,
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Speaker 1: first of all, there's something called the expectation gap, and
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Speaker 1: we think that little ones, just because they can control
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Speaker 1: themselves some of the time, that they should be able
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Speaker 1: to do it easily all of the time. Completely wrong.
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Speaker 1: So self regulation is not there. That's your background information.
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Speaker 1: So what do you do? Okay, a toddler that's screaming
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Speaker 1: in their jammys, they're not going to go upstairs. The
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Speaker 1: more you ask them, to start, you know, or to
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Speaker 1: their bedroom. The more they walk to their bedroom, all
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Speaker 1: of a sudden they have a red face. They may
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Speaker 1: be their hearts beating really fast. They are moving fast.
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Speaker 1: The faster the child's body or mouth is moving, the
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Speaker 1: more stressed out the nervous system is. So a three
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Speaker 1: year old screaming and crying, tell yourself, first of all,
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Speaker 1: you calm yourself down, because we can't calm down a
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Speaker 1: revd up nervous system unless we are calm ourselves. I
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Speaker 1: know that's hard, but we take a breath. If we're
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Speaker 1: okay enough, we proceed. If we're not, we get help
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Speaker 1: or we stop. Because when we are in that what
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Speaker 1: we call red zone, and the child's in the red zone,
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Speaker 1: that's when bad stuff happens. That's when we say or
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Speaker 1: do things that we regret later and things don't turn
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Speaker 1: out well. So steady yourself, tell yourself, this is a
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Speaker 1: self regulation problem. This is not a misbehavior. And then
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Speaker 1: we go to calm the nervous system and it you know,
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Speaker 1: for a child who is again if they're moving super
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Speaker 1: super fast. The general idea is that we reduce stimulation.
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Speaker 1: We talk less, we turn the lights down, we get
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Speaker 1: the background noise out of the way. We might have
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Speaker 1: the other children, you know, go into another the room,
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Speaker 1: and we focus on helping the child calm. Now. In
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Speaker 1: brain body parenting, I help parents develop a little toolkit
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Speaker 1: for each child based on the child's something called the
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Speaker 1: child's sensory systems. So our sensory systems is if you
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Speaker 1: know how there are you know what we hear, what
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Speaker 1: we see, what we feel the movement each person, each
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Speaker 1: child has a different toolbox that's needed to calm them down.
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Speaker 1: So we use those techniques from our toolbox to help
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Speaker 1: calm the child's nervous system till they get to a
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Speaker 1: place where they can talk to us. Again. That's called
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Speaker 1: the green zone. So we go from the red zone
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Speaker 1: to the green zone. And once you know your child,
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Speaker 1: and once you get the steps right, you know, check
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Speaker 1: with your child, what color are they? You know, if
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Speaker 1: they're red, you go one way. If they're green, then
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Speaker 1: you can start to talk to them and to read
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Speaker 1: a book and to reason with them and put them
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Speaker 1: down for sleep when they're calm. Again, the calm body
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Speaker 1: is what we're going for.
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Speaker 2: I feel calm just listening to you talk through the process.
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Speaker 2: Something that I talk to parents about all the time.
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Speaker 2: Is that when emotions are high, intelligence tends to be
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Speaker 2: kind of low. And also that emotions are contagious, So
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Speaker 2: we catch our kids chaos and they're cranky and their craziness,
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Speaker 2: and they also catch that from us. So everything that
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Speaker 2: you're saying there is really beautifully in harmony with the
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Speaker 2: approach that I normally share with the air.
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Speaker 1: So true emotions are contagious. Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and this idea, I'm fascinated by the work that
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Speaker 2: you've done in brain body parenting. I know that resilience
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Speaker 2: is something that parents are really worried about at the moment.
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Speaker 2: Some parents will say, but if I'm if I'm going
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Speaker 2: to respond to my child like this all the time,
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Speaker 2: Number One, I don't always have the time for it.
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Speaker 2: Like if we've got to get out of the door to school,
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Speaker 2: They've just got to get in the car, and I'm
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Speaker 2: not going to sit down and try and calm their
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Speaker 2: body down. I'm going to be late for work. There's
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Speaker 2: the practical realities of it that a lot of parents
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Speaker 2: will will struggle with, and I want to ask you
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Speaker 2: about that. But I just want to talk to you
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Speaker 2: about how this affects the resilience of the child in
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Speaker 2: terms of working through hard things. I know that's an
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Speaker 2: area that you've really concentrated on in the book. I
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Speaker 2: know that's a double barreed question. It's two questions in one,
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Speaker 2: but I wonder if you can first of all talk
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Speaker 2: about the time constraints issue and the practicality of always
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Speaker 2: being responsive, but then also what that does for resilience,
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Speaker 2: if you can just sort of have one flow into the.
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Speaker 1: Well, let's first talk about the practical because I think
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Speaker 1: that's so important, because I'm sure neither of us want
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Speaker 1: parents to be listening to this and thinking, well, I
14:44
Speaker 1: don't have time to do it right, you know, and
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Speaker 1: don't want more parent guilt. We are burdened enough as parents, right.
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Speaker 1: We don't want to be beating ourselves up. We want
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Speaker 1: so much self compassion, so I don't have time. Yes,
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Speaker 1: you're right, and our collective cultures aren't set up to
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Speaker 1: develop resilience very well. So I'll just say that one
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Speaker 1: big meta view of this, of the whole question of
15:18
Speaker 1: parents saying like how do I do this? That's a
15:21
Speaker 1: really good question. And parents are parenting in isolation more
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Speaker 1: now than ever before the industry of revolution was only
15:32
Speaker 1: several hundred years ago. We were parenting in groups only
15:38
Speaker 1: several hundred years ago, a thousand years ago. In our
15:41
Speaker 1: phylogenetic history, it wasn't like this, parents, You were not
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Speaker 1: as alone as you are now. Our cultures are alone.
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Speaker 1: Our Western cultures were doing too much, and that's why
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Speaker 1: our children's resilience is suffering. We're expecting them to do
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Speaker 1: regulate their little bodies too much, too soon. So it's
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Speaker 1: a societal question number one. But number two, I think
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Speaker 1: the parents that I've worked with, this doesn't necessarily take longer.
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Speaker 1: Once you get into the hang of it. It actually
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Speaker 1: helps children develop more cooperation. So while it sounds like
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Speaker 1: labor intensive in the beginning, the main thing is our
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Speaker 1: mind shift, because when a child sees a soft look
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Speaker 1: on your face when they're refusing to put their shoes
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Speaker 1: and socks on, and they see you go from saying
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Speaker 1: hurry up, we gotta go out the door, you're gonna
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Speaker 1: be late to school, to oh, sweetheart, these getting these
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Speaker 1: shoes and socks on, and then now we got to
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Speaker 1: we're rushing so fast, mommy or daddy. I'm being really
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Speaker 1: really rough right now. I'm really kind of yelling and
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Speaker 1: I'm a set you know what, Let's slow things down
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Speaker 1: for a second and then look at them with care
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Speaker 1: and concern. It's amazing how that emotional contagion of calmness
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Speaker 1: helps children calm so doesn't necessarily take more time, but
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Speaker 1: I think it also takes a mind shift.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I would add practice, like sometimes we try
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Speaker 2: it and we're like, ah, I got it totally wrong,
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Speaker 2: or none of that worked at all. It is one
17:28
Speaker 2: of those things that we really have to practice. Mat.
17:30
Speaker 2: I feel like a conversation with you is this is
17:32
Speaker 2: going to sound terally really cheesy, but it's kind of
17:33
Speaker 2: how it feels like a great, big, warm hug. I've
17:36
Speaker 2: loved talking with you. I wish we could keep on chatting. Unfortunately,
17:39
Speaker 2: time is going to get away from us just now.
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Speaker 2: But if people want more information about the work that
17:44
Speaker 2: you do, we're going to link to your book Brain
17:46
Speaker 2: Body Parenting in our show notes. But if they want
17:50
Speaker 2: to follow you and get to know you a little
17:51
Speaker 2: bit more and obviously improve their parenting and their interactions
17:54
Speaker 2: with their kids, where would you send them?
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Speaker 1: Oh, it's just such a joy to connect with you
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Speaker 1: justin Yeah. My website is Monadellahook dot com and I'm
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Speaker 1: on Facebook, monadellahok PhD, Instagram, LinkedIn and at this point
18:13
Speaker 1: still Twitter, Doctor Mona Della Hook So yeah, find me anywhere,
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Speaker 1: and I'm just I would love to connect with people
18:22
Speaker 1: on social media. I post interesting studies, tips and kind
18:28
Speaker 1: of neuroscience based information as I translate it for parenting
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Speaker 1: as as every day is whenever I can.
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Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate it so very much, lovely to talk
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Speaker 2: with you on the Happy Families podcast.
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Speaker 1: Thank you again, likewise, thanks so much.
18:42
Speaker 2: The Happy Families Podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from
18:45
Speaker 2: Bridge Media. Craig Bruce is our executive producer and for
18:47
Speaker 2: more information about making your family happy at check out
18:50
Speaker 2: Mona's website, her Facebook page, and also visit Happyfamilies dot
18:54
Speaker 2: com dot a