Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #1077 - From the Doctor's Desk: Funny Families & Relocation Repercussions

Transcript

#1077 - From the Doctor's Desk: Funny Families & Relocation Repercussions · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families Podcast.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: wants answers.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Now, we are so excited before we dive into today's science.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: For the Doctor's Desk. Somebody told me the other day
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: that they don't like the title of the Doctor's Desk
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: because it makes me sound pompous. It makes me sound
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: like I'm saying, look at what's coming from the doctor's desk,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Like I'm the professor and I'm going to profess things.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Really yeah, And I'm trying to work out whether they've
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: got a point or whether it's actually just fun because
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I'm a doctor and I'm sharing the cool stuff that anyway,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I don't want to think too much about it. That's
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: what tiders do and that's why I left academia. Big news,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Big news, Kylie, our daughter. Our daughter has been away
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: for eighteen months doing volunteer work in the UK, and
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: she comes home tonight to know there's normal sleeps, normal sleeves.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: We will have more information about that as we celebrate
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the joy and the delight of having our daughter come home,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: probably over the next few episodes of the Happy Families Podcast.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: But today it is a Doctor's Desk podcast. I'm so
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: sorry to the person who thought it sounded like it
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: was too much, but we're going to keep calling it
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: that anyway. I don't care. I mean I do, I
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: actually do. I do care, but I don't care enough
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: to change it.
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  Speaker 2: No, but it separates everything else we talk about because
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: this is where the research, because.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: We never talk about research and science in any other episode.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: You always get me in trouble for hijacking all the
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: episodes with research. Let's go, Oh my goodness, we're gonna
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: have so much fun with this one. A brand new
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: study from Lucy Amory and Ben Levi, some scientists who
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: are based at Penn State University in the US. They've
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: done this really interesting piece of research about humor in parenting. Kylie,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: does it have a role now if you were to
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: rate how much humor you experienced as a child growing
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: up in your household, Like, how funny were your parents?
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: I feel like you were just like one of you
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: were a clown balloon, just going, that's all gone, there's
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: nothing there, all the airs out of the balloon. No
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  Speaker 1: humor here.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: I think I'd put funny on my list of descriptive
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  Speaker 2: words of my parents growing up.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, based on my last twenty five years. I
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: don't know if they listened to the pod. I don't
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: think they know the technology and know how to do it.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: I would agree with you. Whereas I grew up in
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: a house where my dad's favorite thing to do when
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: he number one, he loved to sneeze and scare people.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: He did these huge sneezes and he just cracked up
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: every time he scared the life out of people. But
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: he also did this witch's cackle laugh. Is that where
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: you get it from?
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Here?
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  Speaker 1: I got her off my dad, and this is what
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: he does. You're ready for this. I've never done this
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: on the pod today. This is a one and done experience.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Here we go. That's what he did, and we would
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: just crack up. We used to wrestle, We used to
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: play games. I grew up with a very very fun dad.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: My mum is very serious. My mom says that I
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: don't have a funny bone in my body. But I
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: think it's because she doesn't, because I am so damn funny. Anyway, Anyway,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: ben Levi and Lucy Emory, their colleagues of this study
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: they were looking. They basically said this despite the widespread
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: use of humor and social interactions, and the considerable literature
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: on humor in multiple fields of study, the use of
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: humor in parenting has received very little formal study. So
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: they've done a pilot study and had it published in
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: a journal called Plus one. And it's really really interesting.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: As you compare your upbringing with mine, I think the
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: research rings true. They found that fifty five percent of
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: people who responded to their survey, there were three hundred
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: and twelve respondents, fifty five percent said that they were
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: raised by parents who used humor.
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  Speaker 2: One out of two.
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  Speaker 1: So the first thing that I think is, yeah, that's
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  Speaker 1: right half the population. We're not raised with funny parents,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and that's where the world's gone wrong. I'm pretty sure
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  Speaker 1: that's the problem. They also found that seventy two percent
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: of respondents said that humor is an effective parenting tool.
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  Speaker 1: So there's actually twenty eight percent of people who think
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  Speaker 1: nupe no, humor does not belong in families, let's not
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  Speaker 1: joke with the kids. Seventy two percent think that we should.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: But here's what I found really compelling. The quality of
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: relationship with parents was positively associated with parental humor. In
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  Speaker 1: other words, as people filled in this survey, and they
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: were all aged between eighteen and forty five, they rated
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: the quality of the relationship that they shared with their
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: parents as far higher when their parents were funny, and
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: the assessment of parental effectiveness was also positively associated with
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: parental humor. I know when I say sentences like that,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: it doesn't sound fun or funny or humorous. Science has
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: a way of making anything fun. Like you deconstruct humor
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: in an academic way, it is not fun, not even
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: a little bit. They've truly made humor boring.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: But what do they mean by humor? Because when I
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: think about the different types of humor that we see
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  Speaker 2: in homes and families, often sarcasm is probably at the
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: top of the list of what most people would cons
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: sit a humorous Yeah, but I don't see that as
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  Speaker 2: being helpful at all.
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  Speaker 1: I think this is a really important question, and maybe
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  Speaker 1: that also explains why why the respondents gave the answers
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: they did. In the article, they say one of the
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: strongest associations between humor and parenting is the dad joke.
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  Speaker 1: We've talked about that a lot lately on the pod.
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  Speaker 1: Corny pun based grown inducing humor but they say humour's
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  Speaker 1: expansive repertoire may have strategic applications for positive parenting techniques,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: akin to how humour has been applied successfully to various
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: real world challenges. Tailored improvisation games that use humor and
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: play based exercises have shown promise for improving the mental
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: health of individuals with early stage dementia and their caregivers.
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  Speaker 1: And then they go on to talk about things like
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: improv and improving resilience and adaptive forms of humour, like
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  Speaker 1: affiliative and self enhancing kinds of humor that seems to
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  Speaker 1: be really really positive. Did I just make it boring again?
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I was just.
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  Speaker 2: About to say, you just used a lot of really
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  Speaker 2: big ones.
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  Speaker 1: I know. See, this is why academics shouldn't try to
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: analyze funniness. We should just get one. I'm friends with
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: a guy who won Australian Comedian of the Year about
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: twenty years ago. We should just get him on to
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  Speaker 1: talk about why it's funny. Kylie. Here's the short version.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: If people get humor wrong, and they I'm thinking of roasts. Okay,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: So at the moment, there's a really big trend on
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: social media that you're supposed to feed your social media
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: feed into the AI and it will roast you. And
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: this comes off the back of the comedy channel doing roasts.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: There was a big one about a year ago with
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Tom Brady, the world's most I don't know, richest athlete ever,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: and I agree with you, it's brutal. Research does show
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: that if we use humor in detrimental ways, it can
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: have consequences including damage self esteem and self worth, increase
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: anxiety and depression, difficulty forming healthy relationships, impaired social and
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: emotional development. Getting humor right really does matter. And I
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  Speaker 1: just wonder, as I think about your question, whether there
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: are too many parents who have kind of and they
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: just roasted their kids, burnt their kids, And that's not funny,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: that's just hurtful. It's got to be a it's got
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: to be a reciprocal, consensual kind of humor to be funny.
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  Speaker 1: Otherwise it's just bullying somebody.
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  Speaker 2: So I guess the dad joke's a safe place to start.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, have you got another one for me? No? No, no, no,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: no no no. I don't want you to find one.
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  Speaker 1: Now we're out of time. We need to move on
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: to the next study, all right, let's go on to
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: study number two.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: This study looks at how moving house impacts our children.
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  Speaker 1: This is a really really interesting study, massive new study
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: in Jamma psychiatry, using data from every single person born
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  Speaker 1: in Denmark between January one of nineteen eighty two and
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  Speaker 1: thirty one of two thousand and three, every single person.
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  Speaker 1: They ended up with a cohort of one million, ninety
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: nine hundred and sixteen people, so let's call it one
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: point one million people. And the way it works in
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Denmark there's a big registration system, the Danish Civil Registration System,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: and it's updated with residential addresses within five days of moving,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: which means that the researchers can track what's happening in
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: terms of location and moves. They also looked at diagnosis
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: of depression that were entered into various databases around the place,
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  Speaker 1: and essentially what they found, Kylie were two major things.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: One of them is very hard to talk about and frankly,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure that it's helpful to talk about it,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: so I'm I'm going to skim across the top of it.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: The second thing, though, we can really dive into finding
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  Speaker 1: Number one. The research has found that people living in
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  Speaker 1: deprived areas during childhood, so we're talking about financial deprivation.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Low socioeconomic status areas had an increased risk of depression
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: across the lifespan. Didn't really matter how long they were there.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: If you lived in those areas, it wasn't really great.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: There was a reduced risk if those people were able
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: to move into better neighborhoods. This is one of the
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: great income inequality challenges that we have in our society.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: The thing that I want to emphasize, though, because talking
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: about that doesn't help anyone who's feeling stuck. There is
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: some good news that comes with it, and it's this
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: moving during childhood. Regardless of what your neighborhood is, whether
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: it's a rich neighborhood or a poor neighborhood, moving during
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  Speaker 1: childhood was associated with significantly higher rates of depression in
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  Speaker 1: adulthood compared with not moving.
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  Speaker 2: In other words, children who live in one family home,
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: stable environment, stable communities do better.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much. Yet, moving frequently was found
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: to be really influential on mental health. If a child
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: moved more than twice between the ages of ten and fifteen,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: they had one point six times greater risk of developing
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: depression than those who remain in the same place, even
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: if that place was a what the researchers are calling
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: a deprived area, that is a low socio economic status area.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: This one really hurts me as a dad because of
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: the decisions we've made across the years to relocate our
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: family multiple times. We've had several interstate moves. And I know,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, you talk to so many people who feel,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: either for work or for family commitments, they feel like
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: they either want to or are compelled to move, and
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: it really puts the guilts on I know that. But
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: I guess the reason that we wanted to share that
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: is because this research just adds to an increasing amount
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: of data that points out that avoiding moving during childhood
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: is a protective measure against developing depression later in life.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: The practicalities of adhering to that obviously very widely. Sometimes
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: people have choice, often they don't. I think of the
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Bluey episode, the first thirty minute episode of Blue that
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: came out at the start of the year, and Bandit
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: decides we're not taking the job, we're not moving, We're
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: staying put. Because of the anxiety that was caused in
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: the family. Why do we have to sell our house.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: We've been through this Bluey Dad's got a new job
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: in another city, but what's wrong with this city? I
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: wish the bandit had moved the family, because in real life,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: that's what happens, and we could have seen bandits parenting
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: skills on display through a really hard time. But I
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: also am really glad that they didn't because from a
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: statistical point of view, it seems like the kids are
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: going to be better off if you can stay put.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: One of the things that we heard time and time
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: again with each of our moves from well meaning friends
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: and family was kids are resilient. They'll be fine.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's going to be a great experience for them.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: But I look at the challenge that our children have
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: had as they've had to assimilate into new communities, news, school, cohorts.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: It's been hard. Yeah, it's been really, really hard, and
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: they need to cling to old relationships as they have
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: navigated new ones. Has been such an integral part of
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: their capacity to thrive.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in your environments, you think about it, staying in
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: one place during childhood means number one, you've got well, ideally,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: you've got family stability and number two, you've got strong
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: social connections to a particular neighborhood. You've got your schools,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: or your sports clubs, or your religious spaces. You've got
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: that feeling of belonging, that feeling of connection. It just
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: makes such a difference. Now now, I just want to
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: emphasize this in case the guilts are really piling up
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: for people, including you and I. The research team were
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: really really clear that there are so many other determinants
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: of mental ill health. It's really really complex, and it's
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: also critical to highlight that this is an association. It's
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: not saying moving causes depression. It's saying that there's an
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: association there's a potential increased risk for a percentage of
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: the population. The study only had access to participants with
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: severe cases of depression, those who had been diagnosed, and
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: obviously they can't capture the complexity of different living situations
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: like kids that are living in multiple homes and all
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: I was about to say, there is so much more
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: to take into account when you look at a child's
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: life and the experiences that they have.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: This is just one of it is. So I guess
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: for me, the take home message of this study is
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: we know, we've got plenty of evidence globally now that
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: if kid can be raised in more affluent neighborhoods, they
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: do tend to have slightly better outcomes. But a bigger
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: predictor of mental health challenges later in life is a
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: number of moves kids have during their childhood. If kids
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: can stay put, that seems to be ideal. However, if
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: they are going to be moving, I'd say the other
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: critical thing is to smooth out the transitions. Make sure
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: that you do everything that you can to soften the
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: impact of that uprooting experience so that you can potentially
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: protect their mental health as they move forward.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Well, that was all little bit heavy.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: We should have finished with the fun. We should have
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: finished with the humor. Is that what you're saying, Well,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I've got a joke here. Oh okay, good, let's lighten
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: the load.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: What do you call the security guards from Samsung?
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Security guards from Samsung? Hashtag not sponsored? I don't know.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: I'm an iPhone user, I have no idea.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Guardians of the Galaxy.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, because that's a Samsung Galaxy. Let's stick with the science.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: If thanks for trying. This is what happens when you're
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: raising a home with no humor. This is what happened,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: you're saying that. The Happy Families podcast is produced by
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Justin Rauwlan from Bridge Media. If you would like more
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: ways to make your family more fun and more happy,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: and more ways to understand more parenting science, jump onto
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: our newsletter Families dot com dot au. Subscribe today.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: What's the difference between a piano, a tuna, and a
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: pot of glue?
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: You know the podcast, so don't you?
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: What is it?
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: What is it?
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: You can tune a piano, but you can't piano with tuna.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's funny. What about the pot of glue?
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: I knew you'd get stuck on that, all right?
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: You got me, You got me.