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

Turn Off and Tune In

The evidence linking television, internet use, and other forms of passive entertainment to negative developmental outcomes for children is growing every year. There is near unanimity within the research and paediatric community regarding the harmless effect of television on the psychosocial development of children; however, ambiguous and conflicting messages are making it difficult for parents to make informed choices around television viewing habits for their families. Several years ago, research detailing the negative impacts of television on early infant development prompted the American Paediatric Association to recommend that toddlers under the age of two have no exposure to television. The Canadian Paediatric Society offers a somewhat muted perspective, and provides advice on how to “promote good television viewing habits in children“, and recommends that “by the end of the first year of a child’s life, there should be ground rules for television viewing; healthy viewing habits should be established in the second year of life“. Other surveys on paediatric mental health provide sobering statistics showing that even these tepid recommendations are not reliably adhered to.

Studies show that approximately 40 per cent of infants regularly watch TV, DVDs and videos by three months of age. By the age of two, 90 per cent of children are watching television more than one and a half hours a day on average, and 59 percent of children under age two watch television for an average of two hours per day. 30 percent of children aged zero to three years old have a television in their bedroom, and 39 percent of children between the ages of zero and four live in households where the television is always on or is on most of the time, even if no one is watching. Given the chorus of concerns regarding the manifestly detrimental impact of television on a child’s cognitive development, one might expect to find stronger recommendations within the paediatric mental health community to significantly limit or eliminate television viewing for infants and children.

It appears it is going to be up to individual parents and families to take bold action to significantly limit or eliminate television viewing from the home. An unpopular position to be sure, but why should that be so? Parents strive to give their children the best opportunities available, and when parents know better they do better. Once the concerns are too compelling to ignore, can we imagine a lifestyle that does not include television at all?

Such an arrangement may not suit every family; when speaking to parents about the risk factors associated with television, the reactions run the gamut from quiet acknowledgement to sighs of resignation. Others respectfully disagree, citing the prevailing wisdom that television is a relatively harmless form of entertainment, even an essential tool for fostering a child's social and emotional development and well-being.

Before going any further, its important to clarify that nearly all discussions involving television invariably dissolves into a debate around content, particularly violent and overtly sexual content. Those concerns are well-founded, and the topic merits a full discussion on its own. For the moment, though, let’s put the issue of content to one side and examine television exposure from a slightly different perspective.

A case against...

It may be true that the business of television has staked a claim to our time and attention. At the same time, the availability of evidence-based research on the potentially harmful effects of television on children can serve as a call to action for families. The case for significantly limiting or eliminating television from the family home includes four broad dimensions; these four dimensions are by no means all-encompassing, but they will cover the most essential ideas.

Television negatively impacts the developmental trajectory of children 

There are a number of ways in which television may interfere with a child's cognitive development. Television is inherently a passive form of one-way communication; the lack of reciprocity means that television is unresponsive to the moment to moment communicative signals of a child. It is for these reasons that television, even educational content designed specifically for children, is incapable of teaching children how to use the lessons it purports to teach in a generalizable or “sticky” manner. Children require interactions with other people to learn the lessons of communication and socialization that will help them confidently master their world.

The sedentary nature of television also leads to atrophy and loss of muscle tone in children, particularly of the postural muscles. This overall lack of movement is implicated in lower levels of sensory motor activation of the neocortex and frontal lobes, the parts of the brain which are primarily responsible for higher level visual and auditory information processing, language production, and associative thinking. The frontal lobes are responsible for certain aspects of self-regulation and the intentional problem-solving skills that fall under the broad category of executive function; these skills are essential for optimal school performance and later adult adjustment. Research also shows that children who watch four or more hours of television per day have much higher rates of obesity and consume higher numbers of low quality calories. Inactivity and obesity are correlated with developmental issues in children such as learning disabilities and behavioural disorders. Statistics indicate that most children exceed the recommended limits for media-related activities.

Television is a meaning maker

Children are constantly seeking emotionally meaningful experiences, and it is within the context of connection and meaning that the most powerful learning takes place. As a consequence, television can inadvertently become the de facto social mediator for children as they categorize the experiences of their unfolding world. How children think about themselves and their place within the social and cultural fabric is powerfully influenced by their sensory experiences. Commercials are uniquely concerning, given the manner in which commercials can be specifically targeted to elicit responses from children.

Television is powerfully shaping more than just the buying habits of our children; on a more profound level these messages are shaping our children's self-concept, enforcing stereotypes, and telling children how to think and feel about themselves within a manufactured context. At its worst, television reinforces their doubts and concerns, their anxieties and fears.

Television inhibits attunement

Attunement is the sense that we feel understood and empathized with on a deeply emotional level, and this feeling state promotes true closeness and intimacy. Attunement is an essential building block in childhood development, and children benefit immensely from the comfort and attachment security of closely attuned relationships.  Attunement lives in the subtle, moment to moment affective communicative signals between individuals. This reciprocal non-verbal communication is vulnerable, and television limits opportunities for deeper and more profound connection. The social interaction that unfolds when there is a television turned on in the room lacks many of these essential qualities. Within a few minutes, conversation grinds to a halt, attention gets refocused on the glowing screen, there is little meaningful interaction, and no attention is being paid to non-verbal forms of communication. Opportunities for warm engagement, sharing of ideas, and meaningfully relevant exchanges are diminished, and children get fewer opportunities to acquire critical socialization skills.

Is it any wonder that a recent University of British Columbia research study revealed that over a third of preschool children in British Columbia are delayed to the extent that they are socially and emotionally unprepared for kindergarten? Television is surely not the only reason, but to the extent that recent evidence reveals correlation between television viewing and later developmental difficulties, we as parents should be more critically questioning.

The opportunity costs of television...Or opportunity lost

Opportunity cost is a term that describes the cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue another action. We make these kinds of cost-benefit decisions all the time, because we have limited time and resources. Given that parents are responsible for setting guidelines around the activities that children can participate in, we should take time to consider the opportunity costs attached to the time that children are spending engaged in passive forms of entertainment such as television, social networking, and video games. Research shows a strong correlation in children between engagement in passive forms of technology (television, internet, computer games), and various neurobehavioural disorders of childhood. Therefore , how children are spending their time merits careful consideration, to the extent that it may limit opportunities for physical activity, creative play, time spent in quiet reflection, and other activities that foster physical, social, and emotional health and well-being. 

The most meaningful activities for children include things like emotionally engaging reciprocal exchanges with parents, make-believe play with friends, exploration of the natural world, and physical play activities. These activities foster closeness and intimacy between parents and children, teach socialization skills, promote problem-solving and task persistence, and build optimal physical and mental health. There is an opportunity cost imposed on children and families to the extent that television competes with or displaces these activities. The cost of having multiple tiered cable packages also imposes a financial opportunity cost to the extent that families may not have as much money available for swimming lesson or that new bicycle, art classes or a trip to a museum.

In the end, children are no different from adults in their desire for meaningful and relevant emotional relationship connection. As television and other forms of electronic social media consume ever greater chunks of our available time we are destined to become increasingly disconnected from the kinds of meaningful experiences we crave. 

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