PARENTING: Some Things You Should Know Caryl Oris, MD - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

PARENTING:

Some Things You Should Know

Caryl Oris, MD www.caryloris.com

Parenting is Exhausting!

Parenting is Hard!

Parenting is Stressful!

• How Parental Stress Negatively Affects Kids
• How to Cope With Parenting Stress and

Anxiety

• Many Parents Are Happier Than Non-Parents

— But Not in the U.S.

Automobile Manuals

Printer Manuals

Baby Manuals???

So Here are my Goals…

• To hopefully decrease your anxiety and stress

about parenting by giving you useful information about best parenting strategies

• To talk about the tools and character traits our

children need for academic, social and emotional success

• To share with you my own insights both as a

child psychiatrist, and a mom!

There is so much information!!!

So Let’s Break it Down…

• The science of effective parenting is one of the most

well-researched areas in the field of social science:

• Authoritative Parenting is

considered to be the most effective style of parenting.

• Better emotional health
• Better social skills
• Increased Resiliency
• Better attachments to parents

4 Types of Parenting

Characteristics of Authoritative Parents

• Authoritative parents expect their children to meet high

standards while also being willing to reason and be flexible with children when they make mistakes. Authoritative parents allow children to have a voice in what happens in their lives, and children perceive that their parents are open and sensitive to their needs.

• As a result, children have the opportunity to learn how to

negotiate, become self-reliant, achieve academic success, develop self-discipline, be socially accepted, and have increased self-esteem.

What Authoritative Parents Do

• Show their children that they care. Accepting and affectionate.
• Praise positive behavior and accomplishments. Hold to high standards.
• Set clear and fair expectations.
• Listen to their children.
• Provide opportunities for children to make decisions and choices.
• Discipline: Establish clear rules, but solicit child’s opinion and allow

disagreement

• Rules are based on reason and limit setting is done with love and caring
• Be demonstrative in showing affection and saying, “I love you.”

Authoritative Parent

The Permissive (Indulgent) Parent

Characteristics of Permissive Parents

• Have few rules or standards of behavior
• When there are rules, they are often very inconsistent
• Are usually very nurturing and loving towards their kids
• Often seem more like a friend, rather than a parent
• May use bribery such as toys, gifts, and food as a means to get

a child to behave

• Provide little in the way of a schedule or structure
• Emphasize their children's freedom rather than responsibility
• Rarely enforce any type of consequences

Outcomes of Permissive Parenting

• Children have lower academic achievement
• Children struggle with problem-solving and

decision making

• Children struggle with emotional self-control,

especially when things do not go their way. They are less resilient

• They engage in more substance abuse
• Due to lack of limit setting and rules, they have

poor time management skills.

Outcomes of Parenting Styles

• Children from authoritative (wise) parents are more

self-reliant, and have better self-control. They are more confident and less likely to be affected by peer

• pressure. Because they have better self-regulation,

they generally have less anxiety. They are generally more academically successful. They have less anxiety, and less delinquent behavior.

• Children from authoritarian parents have lower self-

esteem, are less self-reliant, they give up more easily in the face of obstacles.

• Children from permissive homes are self-assured and

confident, but have less motivation in school and have greater substance use.

Nature vs Nurture???

• Genes are the blueprint, experience shapes the brain
• The potential of the brain is shaped by genetics, biology, and experience.
• Focus has always been on early childhood, age 0-3. What about age 9-14?
• Providing key positive and learning experience during the period of brain

development which occurs at the onset of puberty can significantly influence neural developmental trajectories.

• Important to shift tendencies away from negative risk-taking trajectories

and towards healthy exploration and learning – essential for acquiring skills and knowledge relevant to taking on new roles and responsibilities that lead to adult capabilities. Thus, providing environments that support progress and learning during these periods of rapid growth and development can have great impacts and enduring effects.

It’s Nature AND Nurture!

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)

• Effects of Stress: The ACE Study
• Children most vulnerable to adverse

experiences in the 1st 4-5 years of life.

• Neurons are changed by stress: the

architecture of the brain is changed.

• Stress for long periods of time at a young age is

dangerous for the child. It is toxic.

• Adverse experiences: child abuse, neglect,

domestic violence, household members abusing drugs/alcohol.

ACE Pyramid

What about life’s daily stresses?

• Important to teach your child that sometimes stress,

anxiety, and negative emotions can happen.

• Stress can be positive—helps keep us alert, and

motivated.

• Don’t always try to fix it and make it immediately

better—children need to develop strength and resilience.

• Communication is key: talk about the problem, try to

have your child come up with possible solutions. Work

• n strategies together.

Strategies Children Need to Learn to Manage Stress

• First and most important, how do they see you manage stress?

Assess your own stress level, and the stress level in your home

• Organization, schedules, planning are so important for managing
• stress. Time management should be learned at a young age.
• Developingchild.Harvard.edu
• Exercise, Relaxation practices
• Headspace.com
• Strong4life.com
• Mindworks.com
• Children need LIMITS, and explanations for why limits matter:
• Sleep, nutrition, screen time

It’s about setting limits

Many of these qualities and abilities are associated with success:

• Self-control, delaying gratification
• Regulation of one’s emotions
• Motivation and drive
• Planning, organization, scheduling
• Thinking through decisions before acting
• Learning responsibility, how one’s actions can lead to

good outcomes

• RELATIONSHIPS

Our Brains are Hardwired to Connect to Others

It’s about healthy relationships

• Harvard Grant Study
• 1938. Followed hundreds of college sophomores
• People who are more socially connected to family, to friends, and to community are happier,

they're physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected. And the experience of loneliness turns out to be toxic.

• Sardinia Study: People here live longer than most other places in the world. Communities of

caring.

• “Face-to-face contact releases a whole cascade of neurotransmitters, and

like a vaccine, they protect you now in the present and well into the

• future. So simply making eye contact with somebody, shaking hands, giving

somebody a high-five is enough to release oxytocin, which increases your level of trust and it lowers your cortisol levels. So it lowers your stress. And dopamine is generated, which gives us a little high and it kills pain.”

• Face to face contact is crucial for learning, happiness, and resilience. Relationships help

children learn, increase happiness, and can actually extend our lives.

How to Live a Longer Life

“All I want is for my child to be happy”

• It’s not really about making your child happy and doing

everything possible to eliminate any stress or negative emotion.

• It’s not about scheduling them for every possible class or

sport or tutor and buying them everything that their friends have

• It’s about being unconditionally loving and supportive,

while setting high expectations not just academically but for being a good, decent, caring, empathic human being.

• And happiness will result from being a decent, moral, kind,

productive person who can have kind, loving relationships with others.

It’s about mutual respect

Respecting One Another

• It is about accepting someone for who they are, even

when they are different or you do not agree with them:

• “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught”: South Pacific
• Having conversations with your child about diversity and

racism is very important. Children learn from their family and their environment.

• Respect builds safety and trust in relationships
• Discuss with your child how it feels when they treat

you disrespectfully. Share your feelings with your

• child. EMPATHY: What is it like to walk in someone

else’s shoes?

These are Important Conversations

• Respecting our Differences
• Every person has strengths and weaknesses:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/02/opinion/disabled-human- rights.html:

• Disabled lives are lives, and are charged with inherent dignity. Most people

with disabilities don’t wish they had never been born; most people with disabilities contribute to the world they inhabit; most people with disabilities both give more to and get more from life than their nondisabled peers may be inclined to guess. Some have rich lives despite their disability, but others would say they have rich lives at least in part because of their disability.

• It is never acceptable to denigrate or diminish another person. It is never

acceptable to join in when another child does this.

• Role play, give your child strategies, how to talk:
• www.parenttoolkit.com

A favorite quote

It’s about Responsibility

• Everyone pitches in, everyone has a chore for the

betterment of the family: doing chores as a child associated with greater success in life

• Have your child be part of the conversation about

scheduling, homework, screen time, sleep. Make schedules with them. Let them learn about how to manage their time.

• Make sure your child chooses an activity, or hobby

that helps them to develop a strength or aptitude

• Have conversations at dinner about how you each

spent your day. Make children aware of your work and your responsibilities.

It’s about Valuing Education

• One of the best predictors of a child’s success in school is the

extent to which the home environment demonstrates that learning and education are valued

• Lessen the divide between home and school: learning occurs

everywhere.

• Ask specific questions about content learned, learn more

together with interesting books, videos

• READING: Do not treat it as a punishment or a reward. It should

be considered a privilege, a pleasure unto itself. Reading is fundamental to academic achievement, executive functioning, and makes you more knowledgeable. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/sunday-review/children- reading.html

• Unplug as a family. Designate time to read together, play games

together, interact and talk.

How We Learn

• Learning is an ACTIVE process: the more we repeat or relearn

something, the stronger the neural pathway that gets formed.

• Spaces at home for work and reading. Encourage trips to the

library.

• One of the best ways to reinforce learning is to teach what you

have learned to someone else: Let your child teach you what they learned that day

• Studying: not reviewing notes as much as summarizing content,

making index cards, SELF-QUIZZING!!! Retrieve information from memory:

• Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning: Brown and

Roediger

• Learning How To Learn: Oakley
• Identify your child’s strengths, encourage pursuit of talent.

It’s about perseverance

• Failure and mistakes are ok. RESILIENCE. The ability to overcome

hardship and obstacles, and bounce back from failure.

• Angela Duckworth: GRIT. How do you maintain your motivation

even when something is hard and challenging?

• Carol Dweck: GROWTH MINDSET. Challenges are opportunities

to learn, rather than obstacles to overcome. Grit and determination matter more than talent and intelligence.

• Atul Gawande: “People often assume that you have to have

great hands to be become a surgeon, but it’s not true…what’s most important is practicing this one difficult thing day and night for years on end.”

It’s about Preparing for Adolescence!

The Brain

We’re in School: Let’s Take a Quiz!

• Teen behavior is due to raging hormones
• Teenagers have poor decision making skills
• Teenagers generally do not consider the

consequences of their actions

• The teen years is a time we just have to

survive!

The brain is rapidly changing at puberty

• Use it or Lose It!
• The brain prunes itself at puberty
• Emotional center of the brain and Prefrontal Cortex:
• This is an emotional brain
• PFC not fully wired until mid 20’s
• Dopamine and the reward center
• Dopamine is the “feel good” chemical
• More dopamine in the reward center during adolescence
• Teens take risks for the excitement and the reward: Create

positive risks for them!!!

Why Parents Need to Understand the PFC

• It’s highly influenced by interactions with parents
• It’s about self-control, self-regulation, being motivated

and productive, having good relationships with others. Strengthen self-control!

• Children learn by watching and imitating: what do

they see when you are upset, when you are driving, when you are stressed.

• Work on helping your child develop a strong

prefrontal cortex before the emotional center of the brain rules during adolescence

And certainly problems can ensue…

• Half of all psychiatric conditions begin by age 14
• Suicide is now the 2nd leading cause of death for the 10-24 year
• ld population
• Peer pressure highest in Middle School years
• Girls internalize their emotions: very vulnerable to stress, anxiety,
• depression. They still need their fathers!
• Communication is critical: listen, don’t judge, LISTEN!
• Adolescence lasts 15 years!!! It’s a time of great opportunity,

learning, creativity: But they need us to be PRESENT!

But it’s still so important to have fun!

• Play games together!
• Good for self-control, taking turns, planning

strategies

• Good for laughing together!
• Have dinner together and talk!
• UNPLUG TOGETHER!

Some Helpful Websites

• Childmind.org
• Understood.org
• Developingchild.Harvard.edu
• Parentingforbrain.com
• Theinspiredtreehouse.com
• Parenttoolkit.com

Thank you, and goodnight!