Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / The 6 Worst Parenting Tips We’re Never Taking Again

Transcript

The 6 Worst Parenting Tips We’re Never Taking Again · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: There is so much helpful parenting advice out there, so
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: much that makes you go.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's definitely going to help. It's going to make
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: me a better parent.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: It's going to increase the quality of my connection between
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: myself and my children.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: I need to do this.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: And Instagram, TikTok and the other social platforms are some
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: of the places where you get that advice. But my goodness,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: there's some bad stuff out there as well.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Not helpful at all.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: And today I'm the Happy Families podcast where you get
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: real parenting solutions every day because we're Australia's most downloaded
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: parenting podcast. Kylie and I are going to walk you
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: through our three what would you call it, the three
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: pieces of parenting advice that we're going to ignore forever
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: and teach our kids to ignore and hopefully help you
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: encourage you to ignore as well.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Stay with us. So, Kylie, I'm going to get you
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: to kick it.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Off with your first one and we're going to go
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: like you me, you me, you me, and let's share
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: the three things each that we think we should be
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: ignoring as parents because the parenting advice is terrible.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: So my first one is the whole myth that controlled
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: crying is an opportunity for babies to learn independence. Yeah
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: through distress.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah Yeah, that bad idea.
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: Fundamentally misunderstands how attachment works.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I've got to jump in really quickly. I spoke to
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: somebody just the other day who was all for control crying,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: and I asked them how old their child was, and
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: it was like a three month old child or something
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: like that, and I was just like, I'm totally against it.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: But even if you are going to do it, research
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: in this specific area is actually quite clear. There's not
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: a lot of good research on control crying, letting them
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: cry it out, but there is clear research that if
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: your child is under six months, you don't do it,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: it's bad for the child, full stop, end of story.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Just don't.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to put that into a public service announcement.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: But anyway, back to you, So there's a reason that
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: you don't like it.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: Well, when we ignore our baby's primary form of communication,
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: what are we teaching them. We're teaching them that they
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: don't matter like it Just it breaks my heart and
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: I can't. I can't do it.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And we've been there and we've been through it,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: and it's It's pretty brutal, isn't it like a really
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: really rough, rough thing to do, Kylie. My first one,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: My first one is that timeouts teach consequences. I mean,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: I've been on a personal mission to eradicate super nannies
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: you need a timeout thing from the Parenting Resource Manual
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: for about twenty years now. Timeouts are essentially punishment disguised
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: as pedagogy. That is, I'm trying to teach you something here.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: But you know what they do. They prioritize adult control
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: over any learning and relationship repair. When you put a
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: child in time out, you just make them into the
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: victim and you make yourself their enemy. The only learning
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: that happens is they plot revenge, like they learn.
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: I was about to say, like, who in their right
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: mind thinks that getting their child in trouble and then
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: isolating them is going to create any positive feelings in
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: their relationship.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you use the word isolation. So doctor Daniel Siegel,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: who wrote The Whole Brain Child, he highlights that isolation
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: during emotional distress actually impairs the developing brains capacity for
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: self regulation. And if there's no self regulation, there's not
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: going to be any learning. Children when they're struggling with
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: their behavior. They don't need banishment. They need connection, They
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: need problem solving, They need someone to help them understand
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: their feelings, not just suppress their behavior. So my first
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: one is, let's let's just not take any advice. Pairing
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: advice that I'm ignoring time out is good for kids
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: not true. I can't believe I just made that noise.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: All right, what's your second one?
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: Number two for me is responsiveness spoils your child? Just
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: this advice, It just treats love like this finite resource.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, you're spoiling them, You're giving them attention.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: You're going to spoil them.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that the idea that giving our
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: children attention is actually going to do them damage is
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: so far from the truth it breaks my heart.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: I think it's like this old fashioned traditional concept that
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: if you spoil your child, it's basically saying your kid's
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: naturally manipulative, as opposed to your children are naturally seeking
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: connection and security. To me, that's the central thing there.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: You are not spoiling your child if you give them
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: attention they need. Your responsiveness would be my response to that.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: After the break, my last two, including what to do
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: about tantruming children. Apparently if you ignore it, it'll stop.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: And the myth that we're supposed to let our kids
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: learn to self soothe. And I know you've got a
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: classic that you might read about in Jane Austen. Okay, Kylie,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I've got to You've got one piece of pairing advice
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: that we've decided that these things just need to be ignored.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: There's so much good advice out there, and yet the
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: bad stuff persists and prevails all too often.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: You say ignored, I say abolish.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, abolished, ignored.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Anyone who does this needs to sit in the naughty
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: chair for how forty No, that doesn't.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: I thought that was really funny. I thought that was
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: really funny. All right, here's my next one.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Just ignore the tantrum and it will stop. Is pairing
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: advice that I think needs to be thrown in the
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: dust bin and we need to come up with better solutions.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: What do I mean by that? So research shows that
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: kids who.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Receive empathy when they're emotional learn to develop better emotion
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: regulation skills than kids who are ignored, which makes sense, right,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Like if you're having an outburst and somebody comes to
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: you with a little bit of softness and validation. It
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: says you having a really tough time, aren't you? Or
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: you're really upset, aren't you? It helps your system to
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: reset and recalibrate all those stresshols, all of that adrenaline
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: and nor adrenaline, all of the cortisol at all subsides.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Because now you feel connection, and you feel security, you
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: feel empathy. It just feels good. Is my analogy. If
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: I've got a friend who is distressed, I'm not going
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: to ignore them. I'm going to go to them and
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: put my arm around them and say, you look like
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: you're having a really bad day.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: I'm here for you.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: I don't understand why we think that abandoning children in
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: their most vulnerable moments teaches them anything except that our
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: love is conditional.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Some one goes in the bin.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Just ignore the tantrumental stop whatile I out of garbage?
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: We need to consign that to the annals of parenting history.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: What's your last one?
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: You tease? This has been something you'd find in Jane Austin,
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: and yet it's still prevalent in today's society. The idea
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: that children should be seen and not heard and I
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: would think that often most parents would actually push against
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: this idea, that they support it. But the reality is.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: In practice, in practice.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: We hate it when our kids push back. We hate it.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: We call it disrespectful, and we call it backchat.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Right, we just want compliance, We just want to get
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: us to do as they're told, to be quiet and
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: make life easy.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: But what we actually do is when we silence our kids'
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: voices and we don't allow them a safe place to
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: work through their emotions and they're questioning their curiosity around
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: this and they're pushback on it, we're actually teaching them
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: that their opinions don't.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Matter, and that ignoring their voice, to.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: Ignore their own voice, and to never question authority just
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: because someone's in a place of authority doesn't make them right.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: We need to teach them to be respectful when they
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: push back. Kids need to be considerate, and all too
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: often they're clumsy in the way that they push back.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: But I just love that. I think that's exactly right
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: and a little bit less.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Jane Austen.
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the goal isn't quiet compliance, raising humans who can
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: think for themselves, think critically, and communicate clearly.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, I love it. Here's my last one. The advice
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: that's out there, I hear it all the time is
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: that kids need to learn to self soothe. All right,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: so you've got a child who's emotionally disregulated and they
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: need to learn to calm themselves down. The reality is
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: it's really helpful if they can. But when you've got
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: a four year old who's having a tantrum because they've
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: got the wrong color mug or bowl, or they didn't
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: get what their brother got or their sister got and
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: they're having a tantrum, that's they're not going to learn
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: to self soothe in that moment. And the time that
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: they're most likely to learn to self soothe is when
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: they have a parent who's willing to pause, be in
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: that tough space with them and show them how it's
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: done to coregulate with them.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: I'm so glad to use that word, because that's exactly
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: what I was thinking. We're not actually supposed to do
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: this on our own. We're actually supposed to.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: To do this.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: I was going to say that, I went on, yeah,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: exactly right, yeah.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: Coregulation is how we do it. We catch other people's calm,
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: we catch other people's peace. We catch other people's love.
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: And it's not about codependency. It's acknowledging that when we
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: have big emotions, we just need someone to see us.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: I soothe myself way better if I'm emotionally distressed when
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: I spend time with you, or if I'm emotionally distressed
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: because of you, which happens very very infrequently. I soothe
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: myself better when I get to just be in the
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: company of others.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: And sometimes you don't even need them to do anything.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: We are ultra social people. In fact.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Just talking about this now it reminds me of so
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: the guy behind attachment parenting, that parenting style that you
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: hear about from time to time. Doctor Alan Shaw. His
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: research on attachment shows that emotion regulation develops through thousands
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: repeated experiences of coregulation with caring people around you.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: You think about, you're having a bad day, you don't
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: want to be around anyone, but somebody you love pushes
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: you out the or and says, come on, we're going
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: to go and do something. Nine times out of ten
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: you have the best day ever. And not because you've
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: talked about anything particular, but you've actually you've gone through
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: a coregulation process together without even knowing that that's what
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: you've done.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just had a thought about that.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: How you have to have the repeated, thousands and thousands
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: of experiences of coregulation so that you can learn how
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: to do it. Expecting a child to calm themselves down
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: without first learning how to have been shown how to
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: with somebody else, like how it feels to be calmed
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: is kind of like expecting them to learn how to
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: read without ever having been read to.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: Just doesn't happen anyway.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: They are our well, my three and your three, so
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: six six parenting ideas, parenting advice that we are ignoring
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: forever and ever and ever, And we really hope that
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: our kids listen to this podcast for the rest of
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: their lives so that they can learn how to not
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: do those things. We really hope that you like that.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Jump onto Facebook and tell us what do you reckon?
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Jump onto Instagram and let us know what do you reckon?
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Is the best pairing advice that should be ignored?
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: So best pairing? What is the pairing that should be ignored?
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: I got that round the wrong way? Hunt you did?
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what is the pairing advice that you're ignoring? We
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: want to know on our Facebook and Instagram pages. Jump
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: on there now and let us know. The Happy Families
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: podcast is produced by Justin.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Roland from Bridge Media.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Mim Hammond's provides admin support and additional research. If you
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: would like more information about making your family happier, visit
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: us at happyfamilies dot com dot au. And if you've
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: loved this pod and you reckon you know someone that
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: might benefit from it and use it to make their
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: family happier, click the share button and.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Spread the news around.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: We love how many new people are finding the Happy
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Families podcast