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Do We Overcomplicate Parenting? The Problem With #ParentingExperts
7.1k Plays5 months ago
Jess shares her personal journey, starting with being a high school student with a passion for helping people, her education in child development, and how she eventually became an online parenting educator.
After being on social media for over six years, Jess has noticed some troubling themes in the online parent education space. Jess and Scott discuss the pervasiveness of misinformation and fear-mongering in online parenting advice and share tips for identifying credible, trustworthy guidance.
Jess and Scott emphasize the importance of building a strong attachment with your child through simple, everyday acts of love and attunement and reassure listeners that parenting isn’t as complicated as it seems to be online.
Learn more about The Body Safety Toolkit here!
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Transcript
Introduction to Social Media and Parenting
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Robot Unicorn. We are so glad that you are here. So before we talk about anything related to social media and the issues that you have with it and the reasons you like it and all that kind of stuff, I think it would be more interesting to start with a question.
Journey to Becoming a Parenting Expert
00:00:25
Speaker
Why did you get into this field? What drew you to quote unquote become a parenting expert? What drew you into this specific line of work?
00:00:34
Speaker
I mean, such a good question. I feel like to start like way back at the beginning, I always just have been so fascinated by people's stories and wanting to help people. I feel like even as a teenager, I was the friend who everyone would come to with all of their challenges or struggles that they would have. I was always the friend that people just came to for advice and for support. And so I think I just naturally
00:00:56
Speaker
always was just a good listener and really curious and I think I got a lot of that from my dad who is very similar to me. He's very similar in that way. My dad is a mechanic but I feel like a lot of people go to him and go to his shop just to talk and just to tell him about what's going on in their lives and he's just an incredible listener. He sometimes says he's basically a therapist but he fixes people's cars.
00:01:18
Speaker
my dad is one of the most amazing listeners. So I think I learned those skills, the basic therapy skills that he just had, listening well, being curious, showing up for people. And so I would do that already as a teen. And then I remember going to like a career day and hearing about the field of psychotherapy. Like in high school? In high school. Someone came, I think they were a social worker to our high school and they came to a career day. We were just talking about career days.
00:01:44
Speaker
the other day and how I would like to now be that person for people because I still feel like this field needs a lot more professionals in it. I thought they didn't do that at our school. They did have a social worker come in and that was the first time I heard about that field. That was definitely not the one that I went to. So yeah, it was like a separate session. We went to the same high school. So in case you didn't know that.
00:02:02
Speaker
But a social worker came in for a session and she was talking about her field. She was talking about all the things that she did. I can't even remember what exactly she did, but I remember a light bulb going off in my head and being like, Oh my goodness, for a living, I could help people and listen to their stories and support them. And there's actually like science and research behind how to do that. So that was the first time that you really considered doing. Yeah. What's interesting is I didn't even know this.
00:02:26
Speaker
That's so funny. I mean, we've been together a million years. I thought we would have talked about this. Yeah. This is kind of a little bit mind blowing. Yeah. Well, and to be honest, I was just thinking
University and Career Beginnings
00:02:35
Speaker
about it the other day. Cause you were telling me, Oh Jess, maybe you should start doing some career days so that you can support other people who might not know that this profession exists. And I was thinking about, Oh my goodness. Yeah. I wouldn't have been in this profession if not for a little bit mind blowing to be honest. I did not know.
00:02:50
Speaker
that that's how you were introduced into the field of psychotherapy. I didn't know that. Because think about our childhoods, my childhood specifically, there was no therapy, no therapists. There was none in my childhood either. Exactly, right. So I'm just speaking for myself here, but like, that was not a thing, right? Yeah. So it's not like I got into the field because I
00:03:11
Speaker
went to therapy and was fascinated by it or anything like that. Like I had never even at that point in my life gone to therapy yet. I just learned that this was a career path. And then I went to U of G University of Guelph and I went to their day that they talked about the program that I ended up going to, to listen to
00:03:30
Speaker
people talk about the program is a very small very niche program that i went to ug and the program was adult development and family relationships and that program is a five year program and the idea behind that program is a lot of people would eventually go on to be therapist which you need a master's level education for but at the time
00:03:48
Speaker
a lot of the courses in the program I went to were on counseling, psychology, human development, child development, infant development, relationships. So I didn't even know that that was like a whole field of study even within therapy. So I was so lucky that I got into this really specific undergraduate degree that covered child development, family relationships, human sexuality, like all of these courses that you don't get in just like a normal psychology undergrad.
00:04:14
Speaker
So it was a very unique program. And as I did that program, I went from this girl in high school, Scott knows, who didn't really like school, wasn't very good at school. Wasn't really involved in too much. Wasn't involved in anything. Kind of just went to school, didn't love it. They did the school play. Oh, size the play. I did love the play.
00:04:29
Speaker
And then I got into university and I was like front row seat, taking notes. Like ultimate nerd. I just became overnight and everybody who knew me before in high school was like, who are you? I just became this huge nerd and still am to this day because I was in love, like obsessed with everything I was learning. Finally, you were interested in what you were learning.
00:04:50
Speaker
I was so fascinated by child development and psychology and relationships. I could not get enough. And ever since that day, I just still have not been able to get enough. We want to get to the point where we talk about social media and what you love, what you don't love about it. Maybe give the person listening right now the sparks notes for what got you to where we are now.
00:05:13
Speaker
Then I graduated university and my first job outside of university, it was working with children with autism and in a very behavioral program. So I did applied behavior analysis. I did ABA. And as I was doing that work with kids with autism, there was something missing for me. I still wasn't doing the therapy piece. I was doing just a lot of behaviorism and the supervisor I had at the time really kind of dismissed any mental health trauma
00:05:40
Speaker
That's, I'm not saying that that's the whole field of behaviorism, but that's who I had at the time. And I really felt like there was a missing piece. I'm like, kids are not just their behavior. Like there's so much more going on here and also only working with the child and not actually working with the parents. Like I feel like that piece is missing.
00:05:58
Speaker
I thought you did work with the parents then. That time the parents were not as involved. So I did have some parent involvement, depending on the family, but sometimes it would just be me and a kiddo like sitting in a room together for an hour without as much parent involvement. And again, like, I don't know if this was because of the education I had before that, or if this was just something inside of me that was like, something feels like it's missing here.
00:06:20
Speaker
I knew I wanted more, like I knew I wanted to work with the parents and with the families and also really bring that mental health lens in. And then one day I got a call from someone who had actually done a placement with in my undergraduate degree, who was also in the field of behavior and specialized in trauma. And she said, Jess, I'm retiring and I've been thinking of you for my job.
00:06:41
Speaker
And right around that time, I had applied for my master's degree in counseling psychology, which I knew I was going to eventually do anyway.
Pregnancy and Career Shift
00:06:47
Speaker
And she basically presented me with my dream job. Yeah, you loved that job. I still love that job. Like, it was such an amazing job. So I was a behavior consultant. I worked with children in our city who had the most complex behavioral challenges.
00:07:02
Speaker
So these were kids who were getting kicked out of school. Their families couldn't handle having them at home anymore. There was a lot of family and child service involvement. Very complex cases. And my job was to work with the whole system. So the teacher, the child, the parent.
00:07:18
Speaker
everybody in the system to support the child. And it was a lot of education and it was still looking at challenging behavior and trying to figure out why it's happening and how we can support the child. But also we looked at trauma and we looked at development and it was just an amazing job. And I was so like integrated heavily into understanding behavior because I was literally in kids homes. I would be in the classroom and I wasn't just in the clinic.
00:07:43
Speaker
And I did that job for several years and it was my dream job. I loved it. I worked so hard, so many hours, so much overtime, burned out several times, but I am so grateful for that job. And then we got pregnant and had our daughter and my life turned upside down. And this is where the social media piece comes in.
00:08:03
Speaker
So I ended up getting pregnant while I was working that job. Then 22 weeks pregnant, we went into preterm labor and I had to quit my job and go on the sick leave because I would be in kids homes. I'd be in the schools. I'd be on my feet and I had to be on full bed rest for four months.
00:08:20
Speaker
And Scott was gone all the time. So at this point, I went from career, obsessed with my job, loved it, to, okay, you have to quit today, and you have to lay on a couch until your baby comes. And working from home at that time wasn't really an option, maybe now. It would be more of an option. But that's what I did. And then that changed my life completely. During those four months laying on the couch, I also took a whole bunch of courses, because that's just, I don't know how to slow down.
00:08:47
Speaker
Wow. I mean, I kind of get it. Just imagine being on the couch all day, every single day for four straight months. Yeah. So that also impacted me now, I think, because I had this time to take these post-grad courses that I always wanted to take. And then I also just watched a lot of mommy YouTubers.
00:09:03
Speaker
That's true. I did not get that. Yeah. And Scott was always like, what are you watching? But I would feel so seen by these YouTubers because they'd be talking about their pregnancy or there's postpartum experiences. And at that time YouTube was where you went to watch moms. And I remember thinking in my head like, wow, like I don't really have a lot of mom friends right now. So this is the only way I'm really... Did you have any mom friends? I don't think you did. Did you? No, I didn't have any mom friends. We were the first of our friends to have kids.
00:09:28
Speaker
So watching all of those mom influencers also made me feel seen in a way. And I think set the stage for what would eventually be me posting on social media, because none of them were talking about mental health or actually how to get your child to sleep in a way that was connected or any of those things that I talk about now. But what they did share was their life and their struggles. And that made me feel really seen as a mom who was struggling. Then we had our baby. We were so happy. We're happy and overwhelmed. Ended up struggling with postpartum anxiety. And that was really hard.
00:09:59
Speaker
Yeah, I mean it probably did not help that if I was around I would be driving from the office home and I'd be up for over two hours and then I would have to go to sleep and I'd be gone before you and our oldest daughter was awake and I was alone. Yeah, you were basically alone all the time with no one that had kids like no one else that we were friends with had kids at the time.
00:10:19
Speaker
So I turned to the internet and my baby didn't sleep. She slept for 45 minutes at a time and would wake up and so I could never get a chunk of sleep. So do you think any part of that was just because we didn't know what we were doing? Oh, absolutely. Had a lot to do with that. Yeah. Okay.
00:10:34
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't know what I was doing. Like I didn't understand wake times. Remember we thought for a while, oh, just keep her up as long as possible and then she'll sleep better tonight. It was a struggle for us. So then I only had the internet to turn to because I didn't have mom friends. I had my own mom who I called crying so many times, but she would be like, I don't remember Jess. Like I don't know, which is so fair. So long ago.
00:10:55
Speaker
and I didn't have mom friends who had been through it so I turned to the internet and most things I found was like let your baby cry it out or like these very specific schedules for babies. So then because I was an anxious mom I just latched onto that and then it became debilitating.
00:11:11
Speaker
Like, I couldn't do anything. She wasn't sleeping. I didn't feel comfortable letting her sleep with me. It was really awful until I got some help. And finally, like, there was a few breaking points that were really dark and hard, and then I ended up getting some help. And then after I started getting some help, some support, some therapy, I was like, wow, I'm a therapist who's worked with families and has studied families now for so many years. And I was still shocked.
00:11:36
Speaker
by how hard this was for me. I was not prepared in any way for how hard postpartum was going to be. And that completely
Building a Parenting Community Online
00:11:43
Speaker
changed the way I worked. And so from there, then once I started on my own healing journey for my anxiety and all that kind of stuff, I was like, I have to help parents. Like how have I been working with kids so long without having this lens too of like, if kids are struggling, parents are probably struggling so much as well. I have to. So it was like inside of me, I'm like, I have to.
00:12:03
Speaker
So I went and I got all the trainings I could on perinatal mental health. I pursued that. And then I started posting on Instagram about it. And on Instagram, I Instagram Facebook and a blog, but you helped me start. I think it was the blog that started first though, wasn't it? It was the blog and then the blog was the main thing. Yeah. And then you're just sharing the blog posts to Facebook. Yeah, basically. So I would write blog posts a little bit of time before we actually started using Instagram at all.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, I remember that I was like Instagram who uses Instagram. So, but I started writing a blog and if I don't know if anyone can even see the old blogs anymore, but they were like essays and had so much research in them. My nerd self that is still there was just.
00:12:46
Speaker
full out, but I've had to change my writing style a little bit to make it more accessible. But I started sharing about the link between perinatal and child behavior and just parental mental health. I started studying that more.
00:13:01
Speaker
And I was like, we'll see. We'll see if this helps anyone. Like that's just why I was putting it out there. I just felt it within myself that more parents have to see this. I watched every YouTube video. I read every blog and no one's talking about postpartum anxiety and how that impacts your relationship with your child. And as I started sharing about it, it just started blowing up.
00:13:18
Speaker
It was a slow start, but then it would pick up and I would share little stories from my life, little things I was struggling with. And then over the next couple of years, things just really started to pick up. People I knew like just from my childhood that I wasn't friends with who became moms would reach out to me and be like, Oh my goodness, Jess, I struggled with postpartum anxiety too. Like I can't believe you're talking about this.
00:13:40
Speaker
People I didn't know would start reaching out and over the next few years, it really became our mom villages, what it was called at the time. And it became the place that parents would go to learn about perinatal mental health and child behavior. And at the same time, I started my own private practice, which we still run to this day, which focused on again, perinatal mental health. So that's like postpartum mental health and child behavior.
00:14:06
Speaker
And in my private practice, if we're seeing a child with challenging behavior, we see their parents too. And if a parent is struggling, we talk about the whole family. So it's a very holistic approach. And that's always been so important to me. And now that private practice has
00:14:22
Speaker
seven therapists that work for it. And I'm so passionate about the work that we're doing there. It's incredible to see the impact that it's had. And our Mama Village has obviously evolved over time too. But that's how I started on Instagram. And so Facebook, social media in general, is I just really,
Social Media's Impact on Parenting Information
00:14:39
Speaker
and I still do, felt this passion that there is so much helpful info that I want parents to have. And one more story, and then you can get into your question.
00:14:47
Speaker
I remember sitting in my office in Guelph, and I had a couple in front of me, and they were both doctors. And they said to me, Jess, I can't believe that the information you're teaching me, I was teaching them about toddler tantrums, how they're developmentally appropriate, how to respond, how to validate a feeling, like all these things I talk about every day now on Nurtured First. And they said to me, I've never heard this information.
00:15:10
Speaker
I can't believe that I had to come to therapy to learn that my toddler tantrum is actually okay and my job is to validate their feelings. And they said to me, when are you making a course on this? Because every single one of our friends needs to know this information. We are all struggling with tantrums. None of us know what to do and what you just told me in session today. Why do I have to only come to therapy to find this out? And that's when it really set the light bulb off for me that I need to share about this more on social media.
00:15:38
Speaker
So that's when I switched from mostly only talking about perinatal to also talking about child behavior. And the first few posts I ever did on tantrums on our mom village at the time, all of them went viral. Like I went from having posts that had like maybe 2000 likes or comments. The first post I did on tantrums, I think had like 70,000 likes, which was wild for me at the time. Yeah. And far fewer followers at the time.
00:16:03
Speaker
And this is dating back like six years now, right? This is a long time ago and no one was really talking about it yet. And I remember being like, oh my goodness, I have to get this out of the therapy walls. Every parent needs to know this, not just parents who can afford therapy. So that's kind of where I started.
00:16:19
Speaker
Yeah. I think the way you went from high school, knowing you wanted to work with people, but not knowing exactly how, I mean, you've always loved kids. And even in university, your friends called you mom because you would kind of mother the whole, was there five of you in the, in the house together?
00:16:37
Speaker
Yeah, we lived with five girls. It was definitely a party house, but I was like the house mom. Yeah. And I would take care of the girls. The girls. My good friends who, you know, I still love and they listened to the podcast.
00:16:52
Speaker
But yeah, I would often be the one kind of taking care of them or just, you know, doing the mom thing in the house. And it wasn't because I felt I had to, I just genuinely enjoyed it. So I feel like those nurturing instincts in me are just rooted in there. Yeah, they've been in there a long time. So it makes sense that you ended up doing what you're doing now. I mean, it's not exactly what we were expecting. I think we were expecting maybe focusing more on the practice itself.
00:17:17
Speaker
But I mean, we still have that and we're growing that. So first of all, I think parenting information on social media has been kind of democratized. So it's easier to access information on parenting, on toddler tantrums, on raising your kids, which in one sense is really good because it means that there's lots of information out there. It can help lots of parents.
00:17:40
Speaker
But there's also issues that come along with that, which I mean, one of the biggest ones is misinformation. We see that constantly. People are sending you DMs of people who are sharing information that's just not based in fact. It's clearly not based in fact, or people who their sole focus is just on selling a product and they're not willing to provide any information at all. And we try to make sure that we provide a ton of free information. That's our first priority.
00:18:07
Speaker
That's always our top priority. We probably spend 95% of our time creating free content and creating information that people can hopefully use. Yeah, it goes down to why we started it to be helpful. So we'll get into a few of those. But I guess what are your thoughts on social media? And I mean, Instagram in particular is very short form content. So what are, would you say the benefits of that and the, I guess, drawbacks of the short form content that we have to provide?
00:18:37
Speaker
on something like Instagram. The benefits is what I was saying is why we started it and it's why we will always continue to do it because otherwise, if we can't share on platforms like Instagram, this information sits in our therapy offices and it's not as accessible or you have to buy a book or you have to buy a course. Why is the short form content version of that beneficial though?
00:19:00
Speaker
We're busy as parents. That's what I think. I'm a busy parent and I don't often have time to sit down and read a whole book or take a whole course unless I'm really intentionally focusing on doing that. What I like about Instagram is I can share a story from my life.
00:19:16
Speaker
about lying. Last night I shared a story about lying and how I was triggered and how I responded and why it's developmentally appropriate. Parents can read through that in three minutes and understand that lying is developmentally appropriate and have like three tools for what to do. And I feel like that is really powerful because otherwise that material might be found like in the middle of some book that we're never going to find.
00:19:39
Speaker
So now I can share it with you and in three minutes you are better equipped to deal with your child's lying. So I think that is why Instagram is really powerful. I think that there's quite a few drawbacks on social media and that's not to say I don't still appreciate social media and I'll always continue to use it.
00:19:54
Speaker
I think one of the drawbacks of social media is that it can be really hard to get nuance across. You and I have talked about that a lot because something, I was just talking to one of our employees about this the other day and she was saying, what do I do if my child's hitting me, right? And she was showing me a post from someone else that she read and it was like,
00:20:12
Speaker
five things to do every time your child hits you. So she's been doing these steps that she read online, but it's like, it's not working. And he's still hitting her. And it's because, sure, and maybe in some situations, doing those five things is going to help you. But if you only read that, if that's your only takeaway, you are going to be feeling stuck and like you're feeling because you're like, I'm
00:20:32
Speaker
doing the scripts, I'm saying the things, I'm setting the boundary, I'm doing exactly what I was told to do, but they're still hitting. And that's because behavior happens for all sorts of different reasons, like there's so much nuance to even hitting. And I said to her, I'm like, well, if you were sitting in my therapy office, I would never just say, okay, here's five things, go now do it, right? I'd be curious with you, I'd say,
00:20:51
Speaker
Oh, I wonder what's happening. Like when did it start? Has there been changes in his life? What's happening after he hits? And I'd be so curious with you and help you come up with a solution that makes sense for your child. I wouldn't tell you five exact things to do every time. And I struggle with that on Instagram.
00:21:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely difficult to convey on Instagram because also if you show too much nuance in your posts, then all of a sudden people are asking, well, how does this apply to this situation? How does it apply to that situation? And like it's, it's difficult to actually help people understand all the background information that you have in your head.
00:21:27
Speaker
Yeah. And that's where you're joking about the sparks note things, but this is something we've talked about over and over. I really struggled to be super brief because if someone asked me, Jess, what's three things I can do when my child's hitting? One of my three things is going to be get curious and they're going to be like, okay, well, what does that mean?
00:21:44
Speaker
And then I'm going to have to go into this whole backstory of what it means to get curious. But that's where I personally struggle as a therapist who's on Instagram, because I'm like, that is the information I want to
Challenges of Parenting Advice on Social Media
00:21:53
Speaker
give to people. I want to teach you how to understand behavior and how to think about it, because then it's going to help you so much more than just your child's hitting. It's like the framework that's going to help with everything. And this is something we talked about last week too. But I feel like parenting, what you teach, what we teach as a business, so all of our team and everything, it's actually quite simple.
00:22:13
Speaker
Parenting is quite simple, but it's certainly not easy because there's different things that trigger emotions that have been built within us from childhood even, but it's actually quite simple. The main thing that we're supposed to do is build this strong attachment with our child and through that attachment and through modeling our own ways of dealing with certain situations or every situation in life,
00:22:40
Speaker
our children will also learn how to deal with those situations. But it's only really through that strong bond that you have with your child that they can really learn to do that. And that's a simple thing to say, but it's like the least easy thing to do.
00:22:55
Speaker
Yeah. And that's the reality is no one really needs our courses. Like let's be real. Nobody actually needs our courses. We're not making it necessarily easier because you still have to do all the work. We're helping give you ideas. And like if you've taken any one of the courses or used any of the activities, we're typically not trying to tell you or you're not trying to tell a parent, this is exactly what you have to do. And you're going to stop every toddler tantrum. And any expert that says that is lying, like that's not a real thing.
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's part of the struggle with Instagram, right? I'll see someone being like, end toddler tantrums with these three steps, something like that. And I'm not talking about anyone in specific, but people will say that. And I'm, as a therapist, like, you're not going to end your toddler tantrums. Like this is, it's untrue. And if you do, maybe we have a greater problem because it's important for toddlers to have tantrums. They have to let out these tears.
00:23:45
Speaker
And that's when I start to then, you all know, if you follow me for any length of time, I'm usually very calm, very gentle, but I start to get a little ragey because I think to myself, oh my goodness, we're talking to very vulnerable parents who are so overwhelmed with their toddler's tantrums. And we get it. We have two children right now who are still in that stage of having a lot of meltdowns and tantrums.
00:24:07
Speaker
So I totally get how overwhelming it is. Then you have someone claiming to be an expert and anyone can claim to be an expert on Instagram. You don't have to have X amount of credentials and you don't even have to have ever worked with families. So you're coming on, you're claiming to be an expert and then you're, you're telling parents, I will help you end pelvic tantrums. And I've seen that exact language like this morning on Instagram and my heart just sinks to the floor. Cause I think to myself, well, now I'm a parent, I'm taking this course, I'm doing the scripts, I'm saying the thing.
00:24:36
Speaker
Yeah, that'd be very disheartening. And they're not ending because they shouldn't and they won't until your child reaches that age with co-regulation. Now I'm going to get into the whole teaching, but I do get heated.
00:24:47
Speaker
100%. But we could go in a bunch of different directions here. Okay, so I think one of the key things that maybe the listener wants to know is, okay, there's all these people, all these experts. And I say that with air quotes, experts on social media that tell you to do this, don't do that. This type of thing is basically drugs for your child. And like all these ridiculous statements that are very black and white. Very absolute. Yeah.
00:25:13
Speaker
How does anyone differentiate who knows what they're talking about versus those who don't actually know what they're talking about and are just fear mongering and are literally just there to sell some product. Like that's all they want to do. They're not really trying to help or maybe they think they're trying to help, but they're providing the
00:25:33
Speaker
most terrible information. So how does a parent who's on social media, because it's very rare for anyone not to be on social media. We're all on social media. Yeah. How does someone differentiate between those who are actually experts and those who are not?
00:25:48
Speaker
Again, this is maybe not the easiest answer, but it's really hard because even I saw someone the other day who was saying that they're a school counselor and I was seeing the stuff that this person was posting and it was really dangerous. It was really not rooted in like attachment science.
00:26:06
Speaker
And I think that's a whole other episode that we can do on attachment science. But this person was basically promoting ignoring children and it was very like behaviorism. Like, oh, if they have a tantrum, just ignore it. Just don't look at them, don't talk to them and the tantrum will end. Okay. And then as a therapist who has a ton of expertise in attachment science, I'm thinking to myself, okay, well, yeah, they might stop the behavior, but is that really what we want to do? So it's hard because someone can have credentials with their name and appear to be an expert.
00:26:36
Speaker
but still not be an expert. So we really do have to have our critical thinking lens on. I think a couple things that I would suggest to parents if they were asking me about this would be first see how the content sits with you. If there's anything that's super alarming, really black and white, and like you have to do this in order to raise an emotionally healthy child. That is the biggest thing. Alarming.
00:26:59
Speaker
No. Black and white. If much of what someone says is, it has to be this, or this is the worst thing, like they're using superlatives to explain everything that they do. So it's always the worst, the best. Any superlatives when they're explaining what they're doing, that raises a red flag for me. I love the saying, and I think I've said this in one of the other episodes, my favorite saying that I'm saying I've coined. I'm sure someone else has said this before. Nothing is ever black and white in this world.
00:27:29
Speaker
there's always different shades of gray and there's nuance in every single situation. So if an expert, an expert, again in air quotes, says something is always one way, it's the worst, it's the best, anything like that, then that raises a red flag for me because that tells me that they don't truly understand the subject that they're talking about. Can you give some examples that you've seen?
00:27:57
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, one recently was someone was saying that screen time is the absolute worst thing you can give your child. It's basically like giving your child drugs. Right. And to me, the logic doesn't follow. Like that doesn't make any sense to me that someone can say it is the absolute worst thing. I mean,
00:28:14
Speaker
Yeah, in some situations, maybe it's not good. And maybe it can be something that children can get addicted to, but to say it is a drug. Yeah, it's a drug if you have zero boundaries around your toddler watching TV. You just put them on the couch all day long, every single day, no boundaries. Yeah.
00:28:34
Speaker
And then, yeah, they're going to learn this is something that they love and they're going to probably become irritable. I don't know. There's a lot of things that might happen there. But to say like, this is the worst thing that you can do for your child tells me you have no clue what you're talking about.
00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's so hard because I see these things all the time and the parents will message me because they trust me, which thank you all for trusting me and I take that very serious. They will message me being like, Jess, have you seen this claim? And I'll be like, anything that is that, that's why I was saying alarming before. That to me is a red flick.
00:29:06
Speaker
The only reason I wouldn't say alarming is because I think about what we grew up with, right? Like spanking is okay. Yeah. Let's say timeouts are fine. Whatever. A bunch of different punishments are completely normal and fine. And I think without marrying you, I probably would have seen that online and thought, you know what? Yeah, it kind of makes sense. Like a child does something that's wrong. You need to punish them so that they know. It's just like them touching a stove.
00:29:35
Speaker
We've had these discussions when we first became parents. Yeah. So I think that to me is not that alarming. Even still, even though I know it's not the most effective or it's not teaching children skills long-term, the way I think about it, it's more of a band-aid solution to the problem. It would not be alarming for me even now to see that because of just what we grew up with.
00:29:58
Speaker
So if you saw something like, it's okay to spank your child for X, Y, or Z, you wouldn't be like, oh, I feel alarmed by that.
00:30:05
Speaker
I mean, that in particular is a little bit different for me, spanking in particular, like using any sort of physical punishment for kids. Like a timeout or something. Yeah, a timeout or whatever. Physical punishment that if you talk about Reiji, that definitely makes me. Reiji. Hearing that. Yeah. I'll tell you a blanket statement that I see a lot. It comes in the sleep training world. I think that is very black and white on both ends. I see a lot of stuff
00:30:32
Speaker
if you've sleep trained your child, like if you've ever let your child cry it out alone, you've ruined your attachment. And I see on the flip side, sleep training does not ruin attachment whatsoever. Your child is totally fine. Now that's a whole other episode that we can and will do at some point. But when you have a statement like that, you have a parent being like, oh no, like one time I didn't wake up to the monitor and my child cried for 20 minutes in their crib. Have I damaged the attachment for life? I have had that message so many times from parents.
00:31:02
Speaker
I slept through their cries because the monitor died and now have I ruined their attachments? No, like that's not how attachment works. It's not like a one night thing that you've now ruined. I'm currently reading Scattered Minds by Dr. Gabor Matei. And he says in that book, children are not so fragile. They're not made of glass. Like one instance of something going wrong is not going to completely destroy your relationship with your child. And I'm butchering how he says it. And he's very eloquent.
00:31:31
Speaker
It's a very long-term connection bond that you're building with your child. There's room for error. Yeah. And I feel like on social media, because fear also sells, there's a lot of fear mongering out there. And there's a lot of posts, like the screen time stuff or the sleep stuff that just make us feel like, oh my goodness, I can never
Understanding Attachment Theory
00:31:49
Speaker
mess up. And I think that's leading to a lot of anxious parents that is also part of my struggle on social media.
00:31:55
Speaker
Mm-hmm. I can definitely see that. So if I can summarize, if an expert uses superlatives to explain the problem and it's incredibly black and white, the way they describe the problem, then they're probably not an expert. Like you, you spent some time with some psychologists recently, a bunch of them, and would you say any one of them said this is going to destroy your relationship with your child if you do this one time?
00:32:22
Speaker
this is going to be the very best thing that you could do for your child. Yeah, no, unless the very best thing is showing up for your relationship. Yeah, right. Which is not like a very, it's not a specific, like, if you miss your child crying one time because your monitor battery died. Yeah.
00:32:40
Speaker
Even if you miss them four times because your monitor battery died, like there's so much room. Like you said, Dr. Gabor Matei says this too, but the relationship's not that fragile. That one incident is now going to traumatize your child for life. It is the consistency of showing up and this process of what we call attunement, like trying to figure out what your child needs and being in tune with their needs. That is what develops a healthy attached relationship in the long-term.
00:33:07
Speaker
I think this morning was a good example of that. So our middle daughter is very much like me. She's highly sensitive. She's a little Scott. Yeah. She definitely requires attention from us and like very focused attention without her siblings around. And I was thinking last night, maybe I should take her out for like a coffee and a treat or whatever. So I'll have a coffee and she'll have like a little cookie or something. We actually shared a donut this morning. Cute.
00:33:33
Speaker
And I could tell the difference already in just doing that one simple thing. I would say we are very good at giving all three of our girls attention. But this was one instance where I focused. It was just the two of us. And I tried to anticipate her need before she actually had the need.
00:33:52
Speaker
Yeah, I'm just smiling if you're watching a video because Scott and I often talk about this. I started saying this years ago on Our Mama Village, but one of the main things our kids need from us is just to anticipate their needs before they ask with their behavior, right?
00:34:07
Speaker
If every child has a deep need for closeness and attachment with their caregiver, if they don't get it, it's going to come out in behavior. And they're going to hit, they're going to bite, they're not going to not listen. So if you just anticipate their need for closeness, just like you did this morning, I know she's going to need some time with me. We haven't had that special quality time in a while. I'm just going to take her out for a donut.
00:34:25
Speaker
we're anticipating that need, that is the best gift we can give to our children. And that is like at the root of all the parenting struggles, even in therapy, we're often just teaching parents how to connect with their children and be in tune with their needs. That's what we're doing in child and parent therapy.
00:34:39
Speaker
You've told me that you have told clients before it's actually better for you sometimes. And this is not always. So don't again, nothing is ever black and white. Nothing's ever absolute. You have told clients before it would actually be better for you to spend the one hour that you're in the waiting room while I'm with your child in therapy. It would be better for you to spend that one hour with them than for you to pay me and come here with your child.
00:35:05
Speaker
I've worked myself out of a job as a child therapist many times because the need for closeness and attachment is so huge that I would so often say to parents, take that hour and spend it with your child. Go to a coffee shop, go do something together, go have fun, play video games with them, do their favorite activity with them. What about screen time is the worst though? I've had so many 11 year old boys and all
00:35:27
Speaker
like their biggest dream would be for their dad to just sit next to them and play Minecraft together for an hour. Oh my goodness. I know that our oldest daughter loves when I play video games next to her. We'll play Mario together for like 30 minutes or an hour. And we're just, she's giggling. We're laughing together. We're having the most fun. Yeah. I feel like this idea of, again, why people say screen time is again, this is the most ridiculous statement, but screen time is
00:35:53
Speaker
equivalent to drugs equivalent to giving your child drugs. They're thinking about things so wrong.
00:35:59
Speaker
Well, and it tells me that you have not worked with parents and families in that capacity. I remember, again, this is where we see the whole family, right? So I had a mom, her child was really struggling with, he was like five, he was really struggling with behavior. She was really struggling with postpartum depression and she had a baby. She felt like she had nothing left to give to her son. So I don't know why I'm getting emotional talking about it, but my suggestion was to her, what's his favorite movie? And she's like, he loves Toy Story.
00:36:27
Speaker
I'm getting like all emotional talking about this. Um, this is a regular occurrence in our house. She was like, he loves Toyster. I said, great. Watch it every day with him.
00:36:37
Speaker
sit on the couch, have the baby there, sit every day and just watch it with him. Just ask him questions about it. Oh, what's Woody doing? What's Buzz doing? She did that every day for a month and it got her through like the hardest time of her life and connected her to her son. That's why when I hear absolutes, like the screen times, like it's equivalent to putting your child on drugs. And I think of these postpartum moms that I see, it's like,
00:37:00
Speaker
It just, it fuels me. It makes me so upset because I'm like, it's fear mongering unnecessarily. And the poor mom reading that who's like, this is my only reprieve today. You know what? Someday you'll have the energy. Like right now our kids don't watch that much screens because we actually have the energy to go out and play with them after work or to make the sensory. Like I made a little water thing for my daughter the other day.
00:37:22
Speaker
There has been so many seasons in parenthood for me where I did not have that capacity, pandemic parenting, postpartum depression, and I've just sat and watched Frozen on repeat with my kids, asking them questions about Anna and Elsa, and that got me through. So that's where I think this conversation is so important, and I hope it's a breath of fresh air for the parent who's struggling. You're not messing up your kids by watching one movie a day with them, if that's what you need right now. That's just one example. That's one example. There's so many examples.
00:37:51
Speaker
There's very few things that I think you would say as an expert in parenting are absolutes. And if anything, the biggest absolute is what you said, attachment. Attachment, attachment, attachment.
00:38:06
Speaker
And when we talk about attachment, this is another problem with social media. Attachment itself has been taken out of context. Now, when you see attachment parenting, you're thinking, I'm breastfeeding my baby all the time. I'm co-sleeping with my baby all the time. They're like wrapped to me. They're in a carrier all the time. But there's nothing wrong with that stuff either. That was a great thing. That was me as a mom of my baby, my third baby. I lived for it.
00:38:28
Speaker
But that attachment parenting, that style that you see online from so many accounts, that is not attachment. Like that is not actually how you build an attachment with your child. There's so many ways.
00:38:40
Speaker
At least, so this is me as a non child expert. Regular dude. The way I understand attachment is it's the emotional connection that you've built with. So there's a strong emotional connection between you and your child and your whole, the whole goal of parenting is to eventually, not right away, but eventually allow them to have their own will. They can do things kind of on their own,
00:39:07
Speaker
without requiring you for every single aspect of decision making. They're able to confidently, essentially live life without needing you to direct them or others to direct them in how to live their life. And they're not so fragile that someone being, let's say angry with them or annoyed with them, that won't affect them so negatively.
00:39:28
Speaker
Like their emotions won't be guided solely based on everyone else's emotions. And that only happens through a strong connection with their main caregivers.
00:39:38
Speaker
What the research would say, just to go off what you already said, is that the relationship a child builds with their parents... Or caregiver. Or caregiver. Yeah. That strong, loving, connected relationship where that caregiver doesn't get it right 100% of the time. I say this in my Parenting Little Kids course. Inside the course, there's a parent who their child's crying. And the first thing they think is they're hungry, so they try and feed them the chugs.
00:40:02
Speaker
they like shoot the food away so then they're like okay you're not hungry maybe you're cold and they put a sweater on the toddler the toddler gets mad throws the sweater on the floor finally they're like what's going on and they realize the toddler has a poopy diaper and they change the diaper and the toddler's fine and that is the process of attunement
00:40:19
Speaker
So it's not like you get it right the first time. Sometimes we don't get it right till the fifth or sixth time. But it's the process of my child is having a hard time. I'm going to continuously try and help them and figure out what's going on. And that's why getting curious is so important. And then over time, as a child learns, I can actually trust my parent to help me with these hard things. And eventually I can get curious for myself. That bond and that relationship where they trust their parent is how they end up relating to everybody else in the world.
00:40:47
Speaker
So what Dr. Gordon Neufeld would say in his book about friendship and children is that he can tell the relationship style a child has with their parent through the way they relate to their friends. So if they're always having toxic relationships with their friends, if they're a bully, they're always getting into fights,
00:41:03
Speaker
his first response would be tune back into the parent-child relationship and make the parent and child work on that relationship because that is the framework, the blueprint for all other relationships. So if we want our kids to grow up and be resilient and able to handle disappointment and all of these things, it's what you said. It's really hard to do, but it's not super complex. It's building that solid foundation and that attachment. Yeah. And again, it's something, it could be as simple as,
00:41:29
Speaker
Like what I did this morning, just taking our middle daughter out to, I had a coffee and we shared a donut together and we just kind of talked and I asked her about what, what do you think you're going to be doing today at school? And Phil post coming on. Of course. I want to wrap it up with another thing that I did with our daughter the other day too, because I think we sometimes get in our heads about how to build detachment. I just, we created a sleepover. Our daughter's seven. Yeah. Oh, she loved that. I might cry again.
00:41:59
Speaker
That's just something to note about me is I always have tears. But my daughter was craving time with us. Scott and I went away for a week. We came back and I could just tell she was really missing that time with us. It was coming out in her behavior. So again, I wanted to anticipate the need before she had to go into even more challenging behavior to ask me. So I said to her one night, you know what? I really miss time with you. We need some one-on-one time. I'm going to put it in my calendar. How about Saturday night? Saturday night, why don't we have a sleepover? And her face was like,
00:42:27
Speaker
She immediately was like, I have so many ideas mom. And she did. She did. She had so many ideas. Like it was within seconds. So then on Saturday, she sets up the whole room. She has all the ideas. She wants to do like a drawing station. She wants to do games. She wants to dance. And then Saturday night rolls around. Scott did the other two bedtimes and I go in the room with her for two hours. That's it. We just closed the door for two hours. We drew pictures. We played games. We had a teddy bear tea party.
00:42:57
Speaker
Scott came actually brought us tea and pretended to be a waiter. Oh, so cute We turned off the lights and just turned on one little light in the room and we slow dance to Christine of Harry's lullabies Like it was the most beautiful night and at the end of the night we're snuggling in bed together It's probably an hour and a half in and she's just like mom today was better than my birthday. It was better than Christmas and
00:43:22
Speaker
It was the best day I've ever had in my entire life. Thank you so much. And she was literally in tears. And all we did was just spend two hours just doing whatever she wanted together. And now this week, you can just tell she's been in such a better mental space, like happier, less behavior. And that was free. I didn't buy anything extra. It was just a room in our house. And those are the little things that we could do to anticipate those needs before our children ask for it and really set the stage for the relationships we want them to have.
00:43:52
Speaker
for sure. We didn't really cover all the things we wanted to so maybe we'll have to make this a part two. I feel like every single episode with just the two of us is a multi-part episode almost. There's never enough time when it comes to Scott and I and talking about these things but I hope that this conversation will help you maybe come into social media just with a bit of a critical lens with me and with anyone else that you follow just asking yourselves the question like
00:44:19
Speaker
What is the purpose of this person's content? How does it make me feel? Like, tune in with yourself. I know for me, if someone's just telling me, follow these exact scripts, do these things, my defenses go way up and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, I can't actually do that. But tune in with you. If you find it really helpful and it's working, then that's great. If it's not, it's okay to unfollow someone. It's okay to mute people. Like, just know that that is okay as well.
00:44:43
Speaker
Including you? Including me. Yeah, of course, of course. I had someone tell me one time, Jess, I had to mute your page because I was just going through a really hard time. I didn't have the capacity to learn more. That makes sense. I said, good for you. Like I never want to force someone to follow our content if they're not in the mental space for it. And I'll always be a therapist and a mom first, and I will never be offended by that kind of thing.
00:45:03
Speaker
Obviously, I love that you follow us and that you're part of the Nurtured First community. It means so much to both Scott and I and our whole team. I always say we have the best community online and I am biased, but I truly do believe that. Yeah, it definitely feels like the best one. The parents we have are so open and they want to do the deeper work. Don't worry, I'm not going to leave social media, but I am glad I was able to get somebody's sunset.
00:45:30
Speaker
Thanks, friends. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again in the next one. Talk to you soon.
00:45:39
Speaker
Hey friends, thank you so much for listening to today's episode. We are glad that you are here. If you enjoyed today's episode and found it interesting, we'd really appreciate it if you'd leave a rating and a review. Scott and I actually sit down together and read them all. A five star rating helps us share our podcast and get these important messages out there. Thank you so much for listening and we can't wait to talk to you again next time.