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Dear Dr. Heather,

I would love your advice!

Mary H, Grand Rapids MI

Hi Mary,

It’s a very complex question you ask: How much do we push our children to stand up for themselves — and when is the right moment to jump in and protect them?

And you’re right — it is a different time we’re in now. Most of us (of a certain age…ahem) remember riding bikes until dark (without helmets, of course), exploring uncharted neighborhood territories with only our pals along with us, and riding without seat belts, in the front seat of the car (in my case, I remember riding in the front-seat FOOTWELL of our VW Bug!)

Our parents think we’re nuts about all this safety stuff. We all somehow lived…isn’t it good enough for OUR kids? And to a certain degree, they’re right. Our society does place an inordinate amount of scrutiny on the moment-to-moment activities of our children. They’re not able to run free and just PLAY, and have unstructured “down-time”. Free play, just for the sake of PLAY, is really important to the development of children. We schedule them like mad, and then wonder why they have ever-increasing rates of emotional and academic problems. There’s just too much pressure to perform, every minute of the day. So you’re right to wonder about letting them tackle their own problems, and having some room to grow.

But it is a different time — we’re more sophisticated today about safety issues, and we also understand that bullying can be really damaging to kids. So there is more than a kernel of truth in the approach that says we’d better watch our kids carefully, and intervene when necessary.

So how do you strike that balance?

That depends on your unique kids. Each one will have different needs for supervision, at different ages. Some may need a lot of coaching for how to negotiate complex social situations, like the one you describe. Other kids will have more of a knack for handling themselves. Similarly, their need for constant supervision will vary from kid to kid.

So this means you need to KNOW YOUR KID. What are their strengths and weaknesses, in social situations? What is their judgment like? Are they likely to cave in to peer pressure, or can they hold their ground? Are they leaders, or followers? Impulsive, or analytic? Constantly evaluating your kids in this way will help you know what they CAN handle, and what they still need your help in tackling. And don’t worry if they DO still need your oversight; social situations are one of the most complicated things our brains process, and they are mostly handled in the outer cortex of the brain; the last to develop in humans. In fact, it looks like these brain areas are still a work-in-progress until the early 20’s. So don’t hesitate to step in and help your kids think through these things.

The other issue for you, Mary, is that your kids are in a daycare. Your daycare provider is being paid to keep your kids safe — and so she’d better be watching them closely. Just for the sake of liability, she must provide them with an inordinate amount of structured, safe care. So SHE may be overreacting to her son’s acting out. But I certainly think it would be fine to approach her with your observations about your kids, and let her know that you’re fine with letting the kids hammer it out themselves in most cases.

And your idea about role-playing with your kids is terrific. I think that’s something every parent should do, starting at about the age of 4 or 5; play-act tricky social situations with your kids. Take examples from scenes you have witnessed with them. Wait until everyone is feeling good and you all have some time. Then talk to them about how they might handle a tricky situation. “Let’s play pretend. I want us all to practice what happens when a friend wants to play tag, but you’d rather go on the swings. What can you say to them?” I find kids really get into it, and even start suggesting wrinkles in the scenario. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised to hear them echo the lessons they’ve learned with you — when they’re out on the playground.

As for so many of the issues we struggle with here at BabyShrink, this is not a “One Size Fits All” solution. But by following your own knowledge about your own kids, you’ll find that balance over time.

Aloha,

Dr. Heather
The BabyShrink

PS If you’re interested in learning more about the importance of PLAY in childhood development, read this great article in the New York Times.

Dear Dr. Heather,

Thanks for your advice,
Christine

Hi Christine,

I know it’s hard to see your baby so aggressive with animals. Now that your toddler is big enough to move around and check out her environment, she wants to feel, grab, and test everything out. We’re all born with aggressive instincts; it comes from evolution and our animal roots. But she has no way to understand that aggressive handling of things will negatively affect them permanently. She can’t yet understand that crushing the kitty will HURT it. (And she won’t understand it yet, even if you explain it to her a million times.)

She’s not yet cognitively able to understand the impact of her actions on others. She’s just exploring, and using her own natural (and normal) aggressive instincts. But it’s not really “violence”, in the sense of really intending to hurt someone. So don’t jump to conclusions about your toddler’s personality or temperament. She’s just doing the usual toddler thing. And she’s clearly also trying out the “gentle” actions she has seen you model.

So, what to do? Your daughter is at what I consider to be the most difficult age of childhood; the 10-20 month window is when babies become toddlers, physically, but they haven’t yet fully transitioned into their non-baby minds. So what you get is a big, mobile baby, not fully in control of her body, with all this pent up energy and interest in the world, and not a lot of coping strategies to manage the unavoidable frustration that comes along with it. My shoulders still tense up when I recall my own kids’ passage through that very tricky time.

Johnny Depp said that having a toddler is like constantly being on suicide and homicide watch. You always have to be prepared to prevent your toddler from killing herself, or someone else. It’s a dangerous time! All you can really do is provide as much safety and structure as possible — and this usually means a 1-1 parent-kid ratio at all times, until she gets into a slightly more predictable (and manageable) stage.

But with all that parent-toddler time, you do have the opportunity to model good behavior, demonstrate how to touch others (including animals) appropriately, and generally navigate around the great big world. Many of your lessons won’t bear fruit for quite some time, so pace yourself. But feel confident that eventually, your daughter and your kitties will be the best of friends!

Aloha,

Dr. Heather
The BabyShrink

There’s been a lot of focus on Hawaii lately, since Barack Obama was raised here. It’s been very exciting for our little outpost way out on the end of the country to see a native son go so far in the world. My own claim to fame was that, when I lived on Oahu, I attended the same school from which he graduated.

When I went to college on the mainland, it was difficult to explain my sense of race, ethnicity, and diversity. In Hawaii, everyone is a minority. We co-exist in an intermarried hodgepodge of nationalities and ethnicities. Interestingly, being Caucasian has a slightly negative connotation; we’re called “haole” here, meaning “outsider”; so much so that I grew up “passing” for being part-Japanese, even though there’s not a drop of Asian blood in my woodpile. I aspired to be part-Japanese. I considered the other races of my friends…Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiian, Korean, African-American…they were all “something”. Part-Chinese. Part-Hawaiian. Part-something. Being a haole, in contrast, was not “something”. It was…..boring. Nothing. So my view of racial and ethnic differences was formed in a place where variation and difference was exciting, challenging, and essential to the vibrant success of the community. The best of all worlds. If I may so humbly draw a parallel to the Senator’s upbringing and my own, I am proud to say this is it.

Recently, a friend called to ask about his 5-year-old daughter. He was appalled that she had told her teacher that she doesn’t like “brown-skinned people”. This is from a family dedicated to acts of social justice, and fairness and equal opportunity for all. He was mystified (and mortified). Where did she come up with this hateful idea? And how could they turn around her thinking?

The issue of race is, of course, a hot-button topic that quickly raises all sorts of feelings, attitudes, and ideas. I’m going to make the assumption that people who read a site called BabyShrink are fairly progressively-minded, so I’m not aiming to convert anybody with racist leanings. I’m preaching to the choir on that account, folks, right? We’re all hoping to raise kids with the ability to comfortably live in an ever-increasingly cosmopolitan world; kids who appreciate others (and themselves) for their unique individuality and differences, and who seek to learn from others with a different background or skin color — not to negatively judge them. So instead of getting into a dissertation on race-relations, let’s focus on the parenting issues involved.

Is it possible for a young child to be “racist”?

OK, that’s my first question. For some answers, let’s look at the developmental issues. We know that babies have an innate preference for faces that look like the faces they usually see. In other words, babies with fair-skinned parents and siblings prefer to look at strangers with fair skin. The same holds true no matter what the family’s skin color. A reasonable explanation for this has to do with our innate drive to survive. Something in us, probably genetic, tells us “People who take care of me look like this…….Those people help me to survive, and I want to be part of that group. Therefore, I prefer people who look like those of my group.” If that means a young child from a fair-skinned family prefers fair-skinned faces, is that child a racist? Of course not. That’s just evolutionary protection aimed at keeping families and kin together, for the protection of the group. And it’s hard-wired at a pre-verbal, pre-thinking stage.

How can I make sure my child does not develop racist ideas and attitudes?

Of course, there comes a point in the child’s development where rational thinking then becomes possible. It’s at that time that automatic, hard-wired assumptions can be challenged by thoughtful discussions and actions. That cognitive ability doesn’t really kick in until about the age of 7. But even as early as 12-18 months, children start to imitate us, and soak in our examples by osmosis. So you can start early by modeling the behavior and attitudes you wish your child to have. As they get older, you can begin to talk about the issues more abstractly.

Live a life of diversity

So the bottom line here is that, as families, it’s important to surround our kids with examples of diversity in day-to-day life, just as a matter of course. Even a very young child will take in the modeling you show when you interact in a comfortable, relaxed way with people who look different from those she’s used to seeing. But don’t start making abstract statements about race, color, religion or other topics of difference until a bit later. When she’s in first grade or so, she’ll begin to understand it when you start talking about differences. Esoteric, abstract concepts will bounce off a 5-year-old’s mind. “We’re all people inside, even though we look different on the outside”, and “What makes you different is what makes you special” are all great things to say, but really can’t be understood by a young child. So wait on the discussions until first grade or so. But make it a priority to appreciate differences of all kinds; different hair color, clothing styles, body types, differing physical abilities, all of it, and make a comfortable environment where the acceptance of differences is fostered and encouraged.

“How would you feel if someone said that about you?”

You can also start to talk about manners and feelings, and have your child look at it from an empathic point of view. “How would you feel if someone did not like you for the way you looked? How would you feel if someone said something mean about you, and they didn’t even know you?” Talk about how others might feel for being negatively judged. Let them practice putting themselves in others’ shoes. This will help them to consider the impact of their words on others.

So I don’t think that my friend’s child is becoming a little racist. Far from it; she’s looking for differences where they do exist, but she doesn’t yet have the analytic capacity to apply abstract concepts to those differences.

How do you handle differences, when it comes to your young children?