Parenting

Flash back to physics class a few decades ago. Newton’s third law of motion states, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” The same can be said of parenting philosophies. “The Case Against Over-Parenting: Why Mom and Dad Need to Cut the Strings” is the cover story of the Time magazine issue hitting newsstands today. The piece examines the transition we’re seeing from full-speed-ahead helicopter parenting to “slow parenting,” aka “simplicity” or “free-range” parenting. Hey, we already have a slow food movement and even a beverage called Drank that’s supposed to “slow your roll.” It’s about time we eased up on what Time editor-at-large Nancy Gibbs calls “the almost comical overprotectiveness and overinvestment of moms and dads.”

Gibbs writes, “We were so obsessed with our kids’ success that parenting turned into a form of product development … college deans described freshmen as ‘crispies,’ who arrived at college already burned out, and ‘teacups,’ who seemed ready to break at the tiniest stress.” Now, as with fashion and fine food, “less is more.” And we have the Great Recession to thank, at least in part, for solidifying this new, relaxed parenting mindset. A CBS News poll found that since the onset of the recession, “a third of parents have cut their kids’ extracurricular activities.” Both parents and kids seem to be benefiting from this sort of forced schedule reliever and streamlined lifestyle. A Time poll last spring revealed that nearly four times as many people said their relationships with their kids have gotten better as said they’d deteriorated.

The article also gives a nod to the importance of play “as an essential protein in a child’s emotional diet.” The freedom for kids to explore on their own sans constant structure and enrichment activities is what helps them learn essential life skills such as flexibility, resilience and leadership.

Many of us could use a stint in the sandbox.

They say talk is cheap. Not true when it comes to babies and young kids. Talking (or being spoken to) is invaluable to them; it’s an integral part of their language development. The problem is that that bit of knowledge sometimes takes a backseat to our addictions with PDAs, e-mail and texting. We have all of this technology that allows for instant communication with people around the world. Yet, sometimes you’re so busy waxing philosophical on your cell phone that you forget to communicate with the little guy staring up at you from his stroller.

A recent New York Times article by Personal Health columnist Jane Brody discussed how these hi-tech distractions can get in the way of parenting. Brody’s piece, “From Birth, Engage Your Child with Talk,” also boiled down the basics of communicating with the bottle and sippy-cup crowd. We decided to tap one of the country’s foremost experts on learning and language development, Roberta Golinkoff, to delve further into the issue of how our obsessions with our favorite technologies and gadgets can affect parent-child communication. Golinkoff is a professor in the education, psychology, and linguistics and cognitive science departments at the University of Delaware, and serves as the director of the school’s Infant Language Project. She wrote the popular Einstein Never Used Flash Cards and, more recently, A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool, both with Temple University prof Kathy Hirsh-Pasek. Golinkoff explains what’s not happening when you’re texting (e-mailing, yapping on the cell) and how to talk the talk with a child without becoming obsessed with the task:

In the moment - A parent who is talking on a cell phone is not attuned to his child and what she is paying attention to. That’s a missed opportunity for a “teachable moment.” “Those are the magical learning opportunities when the kid shows great interest in something and you provide the label for the kid,” notes Golinkoff.

The full experience - “It’s really important for kids to hear language about the things they’re experiencing,” says Golinkoff. “There are studies in the literature that show us that when a kid hears language about what she’s focusing on, instead of what the adult is focusing on, she’s more likely to learn the new words that are being used.”

Hook-ups - Piggybacking on the above - “if you’re talking about something the kid is interested in, she’s motivated to make the hook-ups between the words and the things she sees in front of her.”

Useless “eavesdropping” - So does a child pick up language when she hears your end of a cell phone conversation? Golinkoff’s answer: “Think about what it takes to learn a foreign language. Could you learn a foreign language by overhearing phone calls?”

Downtime - “You can’t talk to your kid 24-7. Nor do you want to. You don’t want to wake up your kids in the middle of the night and talk about death and taxes!” Your child needs some downtime to play and to explore and discover on his own.

Doing what comes naturally - “A child is going to pick up needed vocabulary in an absolutely natural way that seems to require no extra effort.” A “natural way” means getting down on the floor and playing with your DC. Let her take the lead, and you follow along. You simply provide some narration along the way. “Interact with your kid from your kid’s perspective and have a good time.”

There’s no app for that.

Frenemy. Bromance. BFF. These days we have lots of ways to label friends and friendships. Heck, thanks to Facebook, the words “friend” and “de-friend” are now verbs. The lingo might be changing but the basic concept stays the same: Friends are important in our lives. And laying a solid friendship foundation for young kids is key for their social development as they get older.

London parenting expert Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer, author of Raising Confident Girls and Raising Confident Boys, is out with a new book entitled Making Friends: A Guide to Understanding and Nurturing Your Child’s Friendships. She offers tips for parents on teaching kids to be good friends without micromanaging those relationships:

Leading by example - For the first three or four years, so much of a child’s learning is about watching and copying. So parents have to teach by example. “You can teach good friendship patterns if you socialize with friends regularly and are warm, generous and relaxed with them.” Let your kids see you laugh with your own BFFs.

Mom in the spotlight - Research into why some kids have happy friendships while others struggle “shows the biggest influence is having a mom who has warm friendships.” So keep your own friendship networks alive when your kids are small no matter how high-maintenance they are. The second biggest factor linked to happy friendships is a good bond between mother and child.

Positive reinforcement - Like all those ads in New York City’s subway stations state, if you see something, say something. “The best way to encourage the traits of good friendship is to say something positive when you see your child” help a friend, share or engage is some other act of kindness.

Showing restraint - With helicopter parenting all too prevalent these days, it’s important to realize that too much parental interference in the friendship process “can not only undermine your child’s long-term skill development and confidence but also suggest to him that you don’t trust him.” Kids need to learn to trust their own judgment. That happens when they are left to their own devices to learn about human nature, their own preferences and the “skills needed to maintain friendships.”

The cousin factor: Many children are friends with their cousins. But after about age six or seven, it’s essential that kids also have friends outside the family circle. Friendships with cousins can be too “easy” and “protected” and don’t necessarily expose kids to some of the “rougher aspects of friendship.”

Making Friends is available on amazon.com.

Time-outs are the modern parents’ cruelty-free answer to spanking, and they’re recommended by everyone from Dr. Sears to Supernanny. And they work! The problem is, says a story from the New York Times, they make your kids dislike you.

According to research performed on ninth graders and college students by Israeli researchers Avi Assor and Guy Roth and motivation expert Edward L. Deci, “conditional parenting” (withdrawing love and/or attention when a child misbehaves) does get results. “But compliance came at a steep price,” writes Alfie Kohn, himself a noted author. “First, these children tended to resent and dislike their parents. Second, they were apt to say that the way they acted was often due more to a ’strong internal pressure’ than to ‘a real sense of choice.’ Moreover, their happiness after succeeding at something was usually short-lived, and they often felt guilty or ashamed.”

A better way, suggests Kohn and the research by Assor, Roth, and Deci: “unconditional acceptance by parents as well as teachers should be accompanied by ‘autonomy support’: explaining reasons for requests, maximizing opportunities for the child to participate in making decisions, being encouraging without manipulating, and actively imagining how things look from the child’s point of view.”

Baby won’t sleep or stop crying? Two recent studies say it’s because you’re doing it wrong.

As Motherlode’s Lisa Belkin blogged about last week, Tel Aviv University researchers used sleep diaries, parent questionnaires, and infant monitors to take a look at the sleep patterns of 85 families. Moms who went into their pregnancies with the belief that infant cries were signs of distress were more likely to have babies who cried and woke up at night. In contrast, pregnant moms-to-be who believed infants should learn to comfort themselves were more likely to have babies who slept through the night. (The study is not available online, but the abstract is).

The second study, tagged by Babble’s Madeline Holler, looks at research conducted at an Australian university. Thirty mothers were given brain scans while looking at photographs of their own seven-month-old infants with varying expressions on their faces (crying, laughing, etc.), and had blood analyzed before and after playing with their infants. The mothers’ relationship with their own mothers was also explored.

Researchers found that the moms with the best relationships with their own mothers experienced a boost in oxytocin and more activity in the pleasure centers of their brains when playing with their infants or looking at pictures of them that exhibited emotions such as happiness and sadness. In contrast, mothers who had difficult relationships with their own mothers were more likely to show activity in the brain’s bummer regions, and experience emotions like pain or disgust. The lead researcher said that a “mother’s own experience in childhood may shape how she responds to her baby’s needs.”

So, are moms left to conclude that if things aren’t going well, it’s due to her own expectations or her bad relationship with her own mother?

Depending on how you feel about the ice cream man, you will either nod your head in recognition or shake your head in disgust at Tuesday’s New York Times article, When Parents Scream Against Ice Cream. It seems that a couple of irate parents are hounding NYC officials to ban unlicensed ice cream vendors from city parks, because they find their habit of lingering by the playground “predatory.”

Those parents’ mouthpiece, Vicki Sell, who has a three-year-old daughter, says she feels bad trying to oust the cream peddlers. But she’s been calling the city’s 311 complaint line ever “since Katherine had an inconsolable meltdown about not being able to have a treat,” the Times wrote dryly.

Before you mark Sell down as a mom launched on a crusade because her daughter had a tantrum, consider these words from one mom, bemoaning the modern trend of ice cream trucks and carts that hang out at parks and playgrounds instead of just driving through the neighborhood: “When we were kids you would either get the ice cream or not and then he would just go away,” [Crispin Heidel-Habluetzel, Portland mother of two] said. “But they just sit there now, and it’s like an hour of ‘Can I have ice cream? Can I have ice cream?’ It’s really the vulturelike behavior that bothers me.”

The Times did get off one really good one, however, remarking that “complaints are not just coming from effete organic-food zealots with too much time on their hands.” Heh.

We’ve all been there in the store when your child throws a tantrum and refuses to leave. “Come with me now or I’ll drag you out,” you might say. Gaylesville, Alabama mom Melissa Catherine Smith-Means actually did it. And three months after her felony arrest for first-degree cruelty for children, the blog world found footage of her dragging her small child through a Verizon store. And everyone has something to say about it.

“This woman wasn’t A. watching what happened with her child (did you see near the end, where she almost slammed his head into the wall as she rounded the corner) and B. a frustrated mom at the end of her rope desperately to avoid a scene in a busy store,” writes Jeanne Sager on Strollerderby, Babble’s house blog. She admits she’s not a fan of leashes, writing “leashes beg for abuse - the parents who think they no longer have to watch what their child is doing because the leash acts as a babysitter. Parents who would drag their child around a store.” Guess Jeanne has a non-darting kid.

“Dear kid of abusive mom: yes, this is what it feels like for us when we deal with cell phone retailers, too,” writes Chris Walters at the Consumerist, while Tom Henderson of AOL’s ParentDish had more sympathy for Smith-Means: “We have a court system to determine what was really happening in that store — and in Smith-Means’ head. I can well imagine a mother who ran out of options. Perhaps she told a difficult child that he would either come peacefully or she would drag him out.”

Is Smith-Means a monster or just a mom at the end of her rope?

Imagine how much easier parenting would be if we knew what babies were thinking. Maybe you’d discover that your DD is crying because she can’t stand your mother-in-law’s liberal use of perfume or because she finds the life-size jungle mural in her nursery a little off-putting. Now, more than ever, we have a window into the way babies think (even if we can’t read their minds).

Alison Gopnik, a renowned psychologist and philosopher, is the author of The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life. Gopnik (of The Scientist in the Crib fame) says that with all the psychology and neuroscience experiments, “We can actually say something about what it’s like to be a baby.” Babies are in a state of heightened awareness, similar to what we experience on a first trip to an exotic locale. “You remember more from those few days in a new city than you do for months and months of your zombie life at home,” says Gopnik, adding, “Every day is first love in Paris.” Speaking of love, in The Philosophical Baby, Gopnik also details how babies can make predictions about it as well as understand causation and statistical concepts. (See, you really do have a Baby Einstein!) And she explains what the gay penguins in New York’s Central Park Zoo, Agatha Christie’s husband’s infidelity and ping pong balls have to do with your child’s brain. Finally, the UC Berkeley prof argues that by learning about the inner lives of children, we can “solve some deep and ancient philosophical questions” about imagination, truth, morality and consciousness, among other things.

The meaning of life in a nutshell.

Available at amazon.com.

Most modern parents don’t want to give their newborn baby boy a ho-hum average name like David or Michael. They long for something different, something with snap, something that will let everyone know that little Dash or Ajax is someone to be reckoned with. But a new study claims that giving a baby boy an unusual name can cast a pall on his future.

In the professional journal Social Science Quarterly, Shippensburg University professor David Kalist says giving newborn boys unusual or “girlie” first names makes them more likely to land in jail. Kalist and his associate, Daniel Lee looked at 15,000 names given to baby boys between 1987 and 1991. The more unusual the name, the more likely that boy is to commit a crime.

In alphabetical order, the Top 10 “bad boy” names, according to Kalist, are Alec, Ernest, Garland, Ivan, Kareem, Luke, Malcolm, Preston, Tyrell and Walter.

Now, this doesn’t mean naming your child Luke automatically means he’ll end up in the clink. Why the association between weird names and crime? For one thing, prior studies have shown that the more education a set of parents have, the less likely they are to choose very unpopular names. Parents with more education also tend to have more money, and poorer people tend to commit crimes more often. There are also other corroborating studies: “a 1993 study that showed boys who have strange spellings of common first names (Patric, Geoffrey) are less likely to be upstanding and successful; a 2001 study showing that boys are judged for their moral character and masculinity by their first names; and a University of Michigan study that stated, ‘having an unusual first name leads to unfavorable reactions in others, which then leads to unfavorable evaluations of the self.’”

Be that as it may, unusual names and kreative spellings are getting more popular. Aiden, Hayden, Caden, and Jackson were all amongst the Top 10 names for newborn boys in 2008: and “John,” once top of the pack, is now a pathetic 44th most popular.

You’ve seen him once or twice at the playground — the totally involved and evolved stay-at-home dad. Who is this thoroughly modern man, and what makes him tick?

The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family, offers a look into the changing world of fatherhood today. Inspired by author Jeremy Smith’s year spent at home with his young son, this book investigates the stories of a diverse group of dads who have embraced care giving and egalitarian marriages, from both a social and economic standpoint.

How 2009.

Available at beacon.org.