Is Parenting Innate and Instinctual?

There is mounting evidence that young children today are in crisis, and that parents are experiencing unprecedented challenges in their efforts to respond. Recent statistical trends reveal a growing epidemic of childhood mental health issues and developmental disorders, childhood obesity, and declining levels of physical fitness and well-being. Medical practitioners predict that children born in the last decade will reverse a decades-long trend of increasing lifespan and go on to have shorter life spans than their parents. A just-published study showed that one-third of children entering kindergarten are socially and emotionally unprepared to effectively participate, and teachers report that far more children today have behavioural difficulties, mood disorders, learning disabilities, and neuro behavioural disorders serious enough that they require medication to help them manage.

This paints a very bleak picture indeed, but the actual trends are more concerning when one considers that these difficulties are becoming more prevalent in spite of the best efforts of parents, teachers, clinicians, and other professionals. One of the fundamental issues, as Sue Palmer writes in Toxic Childhood, is that...

"...the widespread ill-effects of contemporary culture on child development are not publicly debated, and there's no shared understanding in society about the difficulties of contemporary parenting. Parents continue to be overwhelmed, not only by tumultuous social and cultural change, but by the welter of information issuing from hundreds of experts." She further adds, "...contemporary adults' knowledge about child-rearing is often limited to vague memories of their own childhood, in a world vastly different from the world of today, assisted perhaps by a few impressions from TV."

Significant social and cultural shifts have cut us off from the collective parenting wisdom of successive generations. The ritual handing down of shared knowledge that existed within extended families and tightly knit communities no longer exists in many developed nations, where this kind of guidance and support is most necessary.

Our social and cultural referencing is no longer child-centered and rooted in the best interests of children; we have ceded our parental authority to institutions and technologies that have been more than willing to usurp our role as secure protector and guiding beacon for our children. As parents, we have willingly and compliantly (and in many cases unwittingly) allowed our children to slip from our protective grasp and into the waiting arms of social, cultural, and marketing forces that have a greater say in shaping our children that we do.

At a time when children need more emotional support and meaningful connection, they often feel isolated, disconnected, or discontent in their relationships with others. At the same time, parents are struggling to balance the demands of relationships, work, and self. These circumstances of daily life can create an imbalance between a child’s needs and what parents can provide. Feelings of anxiety or depression, economic distress, or marital conflict can limit a parent's capacity for sensitive and responsive caregiving. If left unchecked, the ensuing stress and instability within families can lead to upsetting relationship ruptures between parents and children.

These circumstances can lead to feelings of shame and humiliation for all involved, and may undermine a child's feelings of attachment security and emotional well-being. Parents may experience disrespectful and upsetting behaviours in their children as a result, or find that their child is becoming more sad and withdrawn.

Although the trends are highly concerning, there are measures we can take as parents to favourably shift our child's developmental trajectory. First, we must confront the challenges of parenting given the nearly complete lack of social and cultural context for doing so. In many instances we can no longer rely on the help and support of extended family members to pitch in a give a hand with the tasks of childrearing. However, a trusted grandparent, aunt or uncle, or sibling can provide loving and consistent support to our child when we inevitably need to step away. Ideally, our child receives the comforting affective connection and attunement they need, and parents get some downtime to help them regroup and keep their own affect well-regulated. This is especially important for parents who struggle with anxiety or depression, or experience greater than expected levels of stress in their lives.

As our lifestyles have trended towards full-time working parents, parents have been increasingly reliant on childcare alternatives such as center-based day care. For many single working parents, and even two-career families, day care is an inevitability. However, daycare represents a compromise that parents must weigh carefully given the risk factors for very young infants and toddlers, many of whom are spending several hours each day in alternative care. Documented benefits of day care do not outweigh the risks in any study I am aware of, except in cases where the parental home environment is manifestly unsupportive, impoverished, or abusive.

Proper nutrition plays an essential role in early childhood physical and neurological development, therefore parents should pay particular attention to the eating habits of their children at all times. Childhood obesity rates are rising at alarming rates, and this has devastating implications for overall physical and mental health, and limits a child's ability to participate fully in play that involves high levels of activity. As a result, children are increasingly engaging in sedentary activities such as social networking, watching television, surfing the internet, and playing computer games.

Sedentary, passive forms of entertainment are directly implicated in poor developmental outcomes for children. This increasing dependence on screen-based entertainment at the expense of physical activities or interactive, creative play-based activities with peers may be the single biggest culprit in the spiralling developmental trajectory of children. Physical activity contributes immeasurably to the cognitive development of children; research shows that children who are less physically active have lower IQ's and are at greater risk for mood disorders, depression, and have compromised socio-emotional development. Parents take note, and decide how much television and computer time you are willing to allow, given the documented harm that results. I recommend significantly limiting or eliminating these activities for all children under 5, although less is certainly more at any age. I have posted another article that speaks to the specific risk factors associated with television viewing, and so I won't repeat that information here. I will simply point to the prevalence of ethically bankrupt marketing and branding practices that target very young children, the fact that television steals time that could be dedicated to healthy physical activities, the risks for obesity and other lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, and effects on sensory-motor brain integration in sedentary children to name a few.

I encourage parents to emphasize learning opportunities that are play-based and involve creative, open-ended experiences with developmentally appropriate peers. Many early childhood programs currently push the development of cognitive skills such as reading and math in children as young as two years of age, in an effort take advantage of this rich developmental window and give children a competitive advantage in a world gone mad. There is NO evidence that this is effective, except to the extent that it makes children more anxious and less intrinsically motivated to learn later in life. Focusing on a child's achievements, rather than their purposeful efforts is the quickest way to sap intrinsic motivation and rob children of their inherent love of learning. Children are willing and engaged learners up until approximately the time that the adults start to take their child's learning and achievement seriously; that is typically when praise and incentives for achievement, along with the inevitable consequences and shame inflicted on children for falling short of expectations take their inevitable toll.

Play is the most richly rewarding experience that children can engage in, and it gives them the most optimal developmental opportunity socially, emotionally, and cognitively. A child's development need time and space to unfold; this happens in a slightly different way for each child, so parents need not panic unless their child is displaying significant developmental delays or falling wildly short of the developmental milestones for their age. In all cases, provide ample opportunity for creative play with peers that is physically demanding, involves plenty of outdoor exploration of the natural world (essential if this next generation is going to develop a love and understanding of the natural world and their place in it), and provides a measure of autonomy. Children need opportunities for independence-seeking and autonomy in order to develop the social, emotional, and critical-thinking skills necessary to navigate in our increasingly complex world.

Raising a child is a very different experience today than at any time in the past. Our capacity to biologically evolve and adapt has not kept pace with the rapidly changing social and cultural landscape, therefore the demands on parents are more complex and nuanced. Parents have access to greater information than ever before, but our capacity to assimilate this information and make adjustments that serve our parenting priorities and values is a daunting challenge. For many families, counselling services that focus on evidence-based parenting interventions rooted in attachment and child development can be an important source of stability and guidance when parents most need it. The recent research on early childhood neurological development is extensive, and all parents benefit from a clear understanding of the available information. In the event that you or your child may be experiencing difficulties, experience shows that childhood behavioural difficulties are most effectively circumvented