From Tuning In: Parents of Young Children Tell Us What They Think, Know and Need,
www.zerotothree.org

In a fascinating study funded by the Bezos Family Foundation, researchers surveyed, interviewed, and conducted discussion groups with 2,200 parents across the nation. A diverse group of parents included those who were single or married. Parents expressed their childrearing knowledge and challenges, learned about specific child development milestones, and conveyed their desire for reliable childrearing information. For more details, see Tuning In: Parents of Young Children Tell Us What They Think, Know and Need, www.zerotothree.org.

The following provides a summary of parents’ viewpoints paired with findings from neuroscientists and other experts. Parents rated and then learned information such as the:

• Age when talking to and reading aloud to children benefits long-term language and literacy development;
• Age when infants sense and are affected by parents’ moods, shouting, or violence;
• Age when children can control their emotions;
• Discipline approaches parents felt positively or negatively about using.

The following findings may reflect your own understandings and questions about childrearing while also providing insights about challenges you face. This summary concludes with a Takeaway Point and Questions for Self-Reflection.

Parents’ Attitudes about Parenting

While most parents surveyed felt that they’re very good parents, 73% said that being a parent is their biggest challenge, and 91% said that becoming a parent is their greatest joy. Among parents’ top three items to improve, being more patient with their children was a priority for more than half of parents in both low-income and high-income homes (Zero to Three, Tuning In National Parent Survey Report, p. 5).

If this is a priority for you, you’ll learn specific ways to shift from impatience to patience during Holistic Parent Coaching.  Starting to sing a song that you and your child both enjoy singing, for example, can lighten your moods as you complete a task together such as putting toys away.

Parenting as Learned Behaviors & a Need for More Positive Parenting Strategies

A majority of parents believed that parenting can be learned, which leads to a desire for more information about children’s development, particularly brain development. As one mother reflected, “They’re always watching. Even when you think they’re not watching, they’re watching, they’re listening, they could quote your conversations on the phone. I mean it’s kind of scary, but then it’s like, wow. It makes you look at yourself. I’m always evaluating myself” (Zero to Three, Tuning In National Parent Survey Report, p. 8).

During Holistic Parent Coaching, we’ll examine your child’s developmental milestones. You’ll learn how you can build stimulating words and gestures into everyday routines as one way to enrich your child’s learning. Examples include making eye contact, smiling, and reciting nursery rhymes from birth on as you do routine tasks like diaper changing or feeding. Reciting nursery rhymes from your own and other cultures provides a foundational stepping stone to listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Dads’ Roles

When reflecting on their own parents’ family involvement:

• 54% of Dads believed they said “I love you” more than their parents did;
• 47% play with their children more;
• 47% read more to their children.

For 40% of dads, (compared to 17% of moms) being more involved with childrearing is a desire. As one dad explained, his own father wasn’t outside throwing a football to him, so he wants to catch the ball for his kids and be his children’s safety net (pp. 9-10).

If integrating a parent more into family childrearing routines is one of your aims, we’ll create a plan to accomplish that with input from both parents. Through Holistic Parent Coaching, an example of an approach is to build on dads’ interests, skills, and responsibilities and then map where those fit into existing or new childrearing routines. Cooking, drawing, washing the dishes or emptying the dishwasher, playing board games or outdoor games are examples of things that kids and dads can do together. Children delight in learning how to use safe indoor and outdoor household tools with parents, which builds children’s skills and pride.

Awareness of Critical Points in Children’s Brain Development

More than half of parents correctly identified the first 3 years of children’s lives as the time of the most rapid brain development. More than 34% of parents underestimated the significance of the earliest years, stating that ages 3-5 are the years of most rapid brain development. Overall, parents underestimated how early their children can be impacted by critical experiences such as the following:

• Quality of Parents’ Care: half of parents surveyed believed that the quality of parents’ care has long-term impact on children’s development starting at 6 months, yet it starts at birth;
• Children Feeling Sad or Fearful: 42% of parents stated that children begin to feel sad or fearful at one year or older, yet this can begin at 3-5 months;
• Witnessing Violence: almost half of parents said that witnessing violence impacts brain development at 1 year or older, but this can occur at 6 months;
• of sadness or fear. We’ll draw on experts to development at 1 year or older, but this can occur at 6 months;
• Shouting: almost half of parents believed that at 1 year or older children are affected by shouting, yet this can happen as early as 6 months, even when children are asleep (p. 11).

In Holistic Parent Coaching, we’ll build your toolkit of techniques to deepen the quality of your parenting and lesson your children’s feelings of fear or stress. We’ll practice brief stress reduction strategies you can use in everyday life to alleviate stress leading to impatience, shouting, or violence. Neuroscientists explain that a yawn and a stretch as well as humming and singing are examples of ways to activate the vagus nerve to calm you so that you can calm your child. We’ll try various strategies until you find ones that are most effective for you.

Language Development:

Reading to children benefits long-term language development beginning at about 6 months of age, but almost half of parents identified the optimal period for reading to children as 2 years or older.

Talking to children promotes language skills starting at birth, but 63% of parents thought this began at 3 months, and 34% thought the time period was 1 year or older.

Reflecting on this information, one mother stated that she wished she could return to her children’s earliest days to talk, read, and show more love that provide early developmental foundations (p. 13).

For parents interested in applying ways to promote children’s developmental growth, Holistic Parent Coaching offers a variety of approaches. Lap reading appropriate books, rhyming games, singing lullabies at bedtime, finger plays, circle games, and gentle massages are some examples of approaches you’ll see modeled before you practice and then use them at home.

Children’s Self-control and Other Developmental Points

While 43% of parents believed children can share and take turns with others before age 2 and 71% believed this can occur before age 3, these skills don’t develop until between 3 and 4 years of age;

Children’s impulse control to resist the desire to do something forbidden develops about 3.5 to 4 years of age. But 36% of parents believed that children master impulse control before age 2, and 56% of parents believed this happens before age 3.

When parents know developmental stages of sharing, taking turns, and impulse control, they can provide supportive rather than punitive responses. In Holistic Parent Coaching, you learn specific ways to model these skills with your child and others in the family. Through acting out scenarios in the role of your child’s favorite book or movie character and demonstrating skills during everyday routine household tasks or at mealtimes, children absorb and master these important social skills.

Discipline Dilemmas

• Parents’ Intentions: more than half of parents stated that they used discipline to nurture children, to stop poor behavior, and/or to protect their children;
• Desires for Improvement: 42% of parents didn’t want to yell or raise their voices as fast as they did, while 35% didn’t want to lose their tempers so quickly;
• Spanking: 30% of parents spank even though they don’t feel good about it and 77% spank their children often (several times a week or more). Parents believed that spanking is not among the most effective discipline methods;
• Shaming: 69% recognized that shaming by putting children down verbally or calling them names “can be as harmful as physical abuse.”

A mother explained that she does not believe in spanking but when children do something outrageous, taking things away doesn’t work. She’d rather “step back, stop, wait a minute, talk about it later” but instead she just spanked (p. 17). Parents reported discipline approaches that can be effective include setting limits, redirecting or distracting children with another activity, teaching how to behave rather than punishing when children make mistakes, or using a time out.

If you’d like to focus on understanding and changing your child’s behaviors, Holistic Parent Coaching offers a variety of approaches that fit your child’s needs and reflect your beliefs and values. An example of one approach developed with parents and children at a university parenting center is to bring children of any age into a game-like way of talking about and practicing the desired behavior when it is not occurring. Once the new behavior appears regularly in a child’s responses, other behaviors can be addressed. You’ll see the sequence demonstrated before you practice it during a coaching session and then apply it at home.

Parents Choose Different Approaches

• 9 in 10 parents stated that how they were raised had key influences on their parenting and 6 out of 10 stated that learning from their parents was useful;
• About half of millennial and Gen X parents believed they’re more positive and present with their children, used less harsh discipline than their own parents did, and applied these behaviors more often:
  • 57% stated that they said “I love you”; 53% stated they show affection
  • 49% stated they participate in play
  • 49% stated they listen and talk with their children
  • 47% stated they read to their children

Parents in the study now use these approaches less:

• • 37% stated that they spank less
  • 32% stated they yell less
  • 29% stated they pop or swat less
  • 28% stated they “hit their children with an object” less
  • 21% stated they do less name-calling, 23% stated they give fewer put-downs, and 21% stated they intentionally embarrass their children less
  • 41% said they were more likely to explain consequences, and 37% said they redirect/distract their children more than their parents did.

If a goal is to increase your positive responses and decrease ineffective responses to child behaviors, you’ll learn specific steps for using successful parenting approaches. After practicing an approach in a coaching session and then using it at home, we’ll debrief your experience and fine tune the approach to fit your child’s and your own needs.

Trust Gap

• 54% of parents wanted childrearing guidance from child development experts that is available on a special web site or blog;
• 58% of parents found lots of parenting information but didn’t know if it was trustworthy;
• 63% stated that they’re skeptical of advice given by people who don’t know their children and specific situation;
• 47% didn’t know where to locate trustworthy information.

Feeling Judged

• 90% of moms and 85% of dads felt judged with 46% of moms and 45% of dads feeling judged all or almost all of the time;
• 48% of moms and 24% of dads felt judged by strangers in their communities while 33% of moms and 19% of dads felt judged by other parents;
• 22% of dads and 17% of moms stated that they felt more judged by their child’s other parent.

If feeling judged is a concern, your expertise and confidence grow as you build knowledge of the rational for and application of strategies during Holistic Parent Coaching. Knowing the reason for applying a strategy within your needs and values, enables you to explain why you use it if you choose to explain it when judged. Practicing humorous ways to respond to those who judge you is another option.

Takeaway Point

As a dad who participated in this study explained (p. 26):

“If you show a child love in the first five,

they’re going to remember that forever.

If (the) only thing they see is arguing and hatred,

that’s all they’re going to know.”

 

Questions for Self-Reflection

• What surprised you about the findings of this study? Why?

• What did you particularly agree or disagree with and why?

• What information do you want to build into your own parenting and why?

• What insights or ideas occurred to you that would fit your parenting practices?

• Write one or two sentences that you want to tell someone about this study.

• What other topics would you like to see in these blogs? Email your ideas to Jdarmoncoach@gmail.com   Thanks!