How Do You Know Which Parenting Advice To Follow? Science Vs. Opinions?

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Hi, everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Dr. Nicole, and on today’s episode, we are tackling the topic of how you as a parent can best navigate the seemingly endless amounts of parenting resources that are available, especially online, especially on social media. And how do you know what’s actually based in research versus what’s just somebody’s opinion? How do you know what applies to you? If you have ever felt you don’t know who or what to believe, or you feel just overwhelmed by the contradictory information out there, you are not alone. There’s actually a lot of science behind parenting, including everything from parenting styles, to discipline strategies, to play, to sleep to all kinds of things, and my guest today is neuroscientist Dr. Cindy Hovington. She’s going to help us think about how we can make sense of all the information out there to best support our kids. Let me tell you a little bit about her.

She’s a mom of three with a doctorate degree in neuroscience. Cindy is the founder of Curious Neuron, a parenting resource that translates child development and parenting research into applicable advice. She’s also the host of The Curious Neuron podcast. Her goal is to help parents learn how to nurture their child’s brain development, while also remembering that parents need to nurture themselves. Boy, is that true. I love that. You can find Curious Neuron and the community on Instagram. She’ll tell us more about that. That’s originally where Cindy and I met, and I’ve had the honor of being on her podcast. And now we have her here with us today. I’m so happy about that. Welcome, Cindy!

Dr. Cindy Hovington

Hi, Nicole, I’m so happy to have this conversation with you.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I think it’s so important for parenting in general. And then also when we get into the realm of parenting a child who maybe has some additional challenges, diagnoses. The internet has been an amazing thing from the standpoint of allowing parents to find each other, to have community, to access things that 20 years ago, they were maybe combing a few books at the library to try to get information out. So it’s been great in that way. But the other side of that is there’s so much. It’s difficult to know what’s accurate, it’s difficult to know what to apply. So I think this is just such an important topic for people. And I love that you are really focused on this. I want to start by really having you share with us the journey of how it is that you decided to do a PhD in neuroscience, and then from there decided to really focus on this issue of parenting research.

Dr. Cindy Hovington

The answer is simple. I became a parent. So I was doing research at McGill University here in Montreal, and I was studying schizophrenia. And when I had my first child, I wanted to stay home a little longer than the amount that we were supposed to stay at home. And that led to me really questioning what I wanted to do with my life in my career, and I wanted to place my family first in my situation, and really take the time to be home. And I didn’t want to leave research. A lot of people thought — my family was really disappointed after all these years of studying. I was doing a postdoc at that point. And they were like, “Why are you leaving?”, and for me, it was bittersweet. Something was telling me to stay home. And in the end, it worked out really well, because science outreach and translation was something I was always passionate about during my PhD, and I volunteered a lot and taught in schools. And that’s when I started Curious Neuron. I really wanted to take the science that I have learned — because within mental health, I was studying cognition in young kids and emotions. And that’s when as a parent, I started looking into the research and realizing that there was a ton of research that we could use as parents. And looking into parenting styles and then looking at the psychology of it all, and I became fascinated with that. So I started blogging about it. And slowly the small blog that I started got pushed and Janet Lansbury shared one of my posts, and that grew everything. And then I moved to Instagram. It took me a long time to realize how to take these really heavy scientific articles. Some of them, when you are talking about child development and brain development — how do I change it into a simplified version? It took me a while. But to me, that was the whole goal. I just really wanted to share that with parents and show them that sometimes, there’s a lot of opinion out there, but I apply the science with my own three kids. And I’ve learned how to communicate that and how to talk to parents about how I’ve applied the science and to show them the study. Here’s the study that I used, here’s the information that I have. I always give the article, the reference, the source, because I think the parents also, in addition to sharing the information, should be able to take a look at this study if they want to and read the abstract. Some parents are really interested in that and to have the opportunity to say, “You know what? This fits for my child, let me give this a try.” Or in some cases, I’ve spoken with parents who have neurodivergent children, and they say, “Well, I can’t really do this. I can’t stay calm or apply this sort of parenting style, because it’s not going to work with my child.” I want them to have that power to say, “Here’s what I learned at Curious Neuron. I’m going to try it, and if it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work.” And like you mentioned also in your intro, I used to focus only on child development. I would only summarize my studies, and just lots of stuff on child development, but as I became a parent and had my second and third child, I realized, “If I don’t take care of myself, then all this isn’t worth it. I can’t even apply anything that I’m learning about.” And so through my failures, I shared that with everybody, even struggles with mental health. I really want to be transparent in my journey, because the more we learn about ourselves, as well, as parents, the more we could be stronger as parents and be there for a child. So it’s been a learning journey for myself, too.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I love it. And I think it’s so true that when you become a parent, suddenly the fields that we were in, or the research or reason, or whatever, takes on a whole new meaning when we are actually living it. And I think that transparency is so important. And I love that you ground things in the research, especially on social media. I think it’s easy for all of us to become really sort of lazy consumers of content on social media, not really thinking critically about it, scrolling, clicking, not really thinking about it. And social media especially lends itself to pithy little quotes, or “Your three steps to whatever.” And a lot of times those things are not grounded in research. It’s far more complicated to do what you are doing, which is to say, “Let me start with research and what we know to be true. And then let me try to turn that into some little sound bites or quick checklists or things that people can apply to their life”, it’s a tough thing to do.

Dr. Cindy Hovington

Yeah, it’s time consuming. But like you said, for me, it’s just so important that I do it that way because it makes sense to me. That’s how I do it in my own home. And I want people to have that possibility to do it that way, as well. And parents reach out to me often saying that they’re overwhelmed, and I’m part of it. I’m a parenting resource. So I feel it, I don’t want parents to be overwhelmed. But I do. I sometimes I put up these polls, and you will always get over 75% of parents saying that they’re just overwhelmed with the amount of information, and as you mentioned in beginning, I was talking with my mother in law, and she was saying “We were able to make mistakes because we had nothing to compare ourselves to.” And I think part of what’s happened right now, through the conversation I’ve had with my audience, is that we have lost a little bit of that intuition because we are always, rather than just giving it a try and saying at worst, “This won’t work, and I’ll have to try something else.” We are looking for the answer. And I am part of that too, because I’m providing tips and advice, but I really want to be a resource that parents could say, “Well, I’ll take something today”, or “I’m overwhelmed today, and I don’t want to look at anything.” It’s fine because I feel for my parents. We are overwhelmed with so much, especially these past few years, it’s been a lot.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

So many good points there. And I think one of the pieces is around our relationship to social media and the information we are consuming. And that being part of our own self-care, and part of being an effective parent, to say, “Okay, who am I following? What am I consuming? Am I feeling compelled to find the answer? Really, every time I go on Instagram, is my goal to figure out where’s the answer? Where are the things I need to apply? What do I need to be doing?” In which case, you are going to constantly feel like you are totally overwhelmed because there’s 50 different posts. If you are following a bunch of us on there, you go, “Oh, my gosh, I was on here for five minutes, and now I feel horrible about myself because I just saw 15 different things that I’m not doing.” It’s really about us recalibrating our relationship to how we are using these sources of information, right?

Dr. Cindy Hovington

Yeah, make sure that the person you are following aligns with your own values as well. And then you pick your top 10, or whatever you want, and then you focus on those. I think it’s the same thing within our home, with toys and our kids, or even a fridge that has leftovers. When there’s too much in front of us and too many options, we tend to kind of avoid everything. Same thing with toys and children. There are studies around minimizing toys in their environment, and I’m sure we will get into that. But it’s the same thing with information. We are in this world of information overload, but we have the power to say “You know what? I’m unfollowing all these accounts, and these ones really speak to me”, and then have a little notebook or something, take a little note, because I think, for me, it just helps to see it written down, and to say, “Try this this week”, some advice I’ll say sometimes is “Take an old item, an old tray, a serving tray and place it in your child’s play environment. Try that this week, just see if they play with that more. And take away some toys that have lots of sounds.” And so I try to give a tip of the week when I can and when I remember, but it really does help to, to minimize it for ourselves and for our children.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, and I think your point about picking a set number of people to follow, especially in the realm of advice on anything, whether we are talking about people like us who post parenting and child development information, for me, nutrition stuff, or people you are following in the fitness world, or the personal — Pick a core group of people if you are feeling overwhelmed, because that’s going to cut down on that. I realized I actually have a T-shirt that says, “I am not for everyone.” And I think that’s so true on social media. We are not for everyone; you need to pick and choose. As you said, who resonates? Who aligns? What posts do you read and feel like, “Oh, that was thought provoking in a positive way.” or “Oh, I feel better about myself”, or “Oh, that was uplifting”, versus following a million accounts, and then just feeling you are falling short or you are upset all the time. So I think that’s really key.

And I think the other piece that’s coming to mind when talking about this consumption of information is, especially on things like social media, to realize that your mileage may vary, right? Cindy, you and I are pointing out things that fundamentally are helpful for a lot of people, or that the research shows are effective for a lot of kids or a lot of families. And nothing that we are posting is going to be 100% applicable to every single person’s kid and situation. And yet, I don’t know if you see this in the comments on things you post, but I’ll get comments around “Well, what about this? Or “That doesn’t apply because of that.” And it’s like, what do we have? Around 2100 characters on Instagram to do a caption. We have this big of an image space. Of course what we are posting is not going to apply to 100% of situations. So it’s supposed to be thought provoking, right? To go, “Oh, does this apply to me? Do I want to take this? Should I just leave this? Is this not where I’m focused right now? Does this just seem ridiculous? Or is this not applicable?”, and to be able and willing to think about it a little bit and filter that, as opposed to thinking, “I have to make everything fit my situation” Or “I have to argue with people because this isn’t applicable to my situation.” I think we need to hold a lot of this much more loosely, especially when it comes to stuff on social media.

Dr. Cindy Hovington

Yeah, you are right. And sometimes I’ll have this discussion with parents around screen time. Screen time is one of those topics that if I post about, I get into conversations. I’ll say conversation, but because I think from what I hear from parents is that if they read some sort of advice and they haven’t applied that, they feel guilty, like “What did I do wrong? I didn’t do that. Now, is my child going to suffer consequences around this?” And I try to tell them that it’s not about that. And I’m very careful with my words, as well, because I know that parents are reading it this way. We are not saying that you messed up, we are not saying that you did a wrong thing. We are saying “Here’s the research or here’s the advice that I have for you, and you could apply it. If you didn’t, it’s okay, you could do this and you can try that and you can minimize it, it’s never too late.” Even when it comes to your relationship with your child, I’ll have adults come to me and say, “Hey, if my mom or my dad would apologize, or if I would feel seen from them, even if I’m 38 years old”, feeling seen feels so good from your parents, so it’s never too late. If your child is seven and you haven’t really been applying certain parenting styles, it’s okay. It’s never too late to build that relationship. It’s never too late to minimize screen time in your home and have a plan. So I want parents to know that, because, like you said, you are consuming this information, but then that inner dialogue, it’s all about putting yourself down and thinking that you have messed up and you failed. You haven’t. This is just advice. Either you decide it’s not for you and you didn’t apply it and it’s fine, or put some thought into it and say “Should I be more mindful about this in my home? And how? How can I apply it?” Because our goal is not to attack parents, our goal is to give you advice. And I think sometimes advice comes off as if we are attacking, or we are saying, “Hey, you! Did you show a screen to your child? Is your two-month-old holding a tablet?” And that’s not my goal. If I’m talking about the research, saying that we shouldn’t have screen time under the age of two, that’s just the research. If you chose differently in your home, that’s fine, and here’s what I recommend from what I read, and then you do what you want with it.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s so valuable. I agree with all of that. And for us to recognize that our reaction to things that we see posted or to parenting advice in general, whether it’s something we read about in a book or meet with a professional about, our reaction to that is actually about us. It’s not about the information, right? If I’m really triggered, if I see some piece of information, for me, it’s a little bit of screen time, but this always happens when I post things about nutrition and kids, right? So if you are triggered by a piece of research-based information I share about, let’s say, ultra-processed food and kids, that actually has nothing to do with me or the facts that I’ve posted. That has to do with something in you. And for us to get curious for ourselves as consumers of content about that, like “Wow, boy, I had a really big emotional reaction to that. What is that? Is that guilt? Is that feeling incompetent? Is that pressure? What is that?” And in that curiosity then, is there something from this that’s really leading me to want to make a change here? Or is it like, “No, I’m just too overwhelmed with this, and I need to make the decision to just pass on by.”

Dr. Cindy Hovington

Yes, exactly. Because that’s an option.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s right. We don’t realize that, right? It’s like you said, “These kinds of things are not great for kids’ brain development” “Well, you don’t know my kid. If only it were that easy. I can’t feed my kid those things. He won’t eat them.” And it’s like, okay, what I hear there is a lot of frustration, a lot of feelings of incompetence, as you said, a lot of feelings of failure. And really, we want to help people get curious about, “Oh, how could I make a small change here? What could I do?” Because if we are having a strong, positive, or negative emotional reaction to something, it’s because there’s some truth there that we know we need to be paying attention to.

Dr. Cindy Hovington

Yeah. But that’s the hard part as well. Same thing with myself, by the time I had my third child, the diet in our home changed a little bit because I had less time. I had a third newborn. And I had been cooking all my meals, and then all of a sudden, I needed to find things that were cooked and ready and that I could just throw into the oven. And I had a lot of guilt around that time. And now I realize it was a period of time, and I moved past it. But during that time, I had to show self-compassion and tell myself the kids are eating, they’re fine. I know that I can balance it throughout the week. I know that if they had one or two days where I made something easier — I’m going to offer them a salad or more vegetables for a snack, the little places that are easy for me to put those in. But dinners, I just couldn’t do it. I had a crying baby in a carrier on me. And I had a toddler that was crying. I had a preschooler. So I think we really need to give ourselves grace and show ourselves that self-compassion. And you mentioned curiosity. This is something I always tell parents, to approach something within themselves, within their child, within their partner, within each other, in the community, to approach with curiosity and compassion, both of them. Because if we do approach all these situations, including a person who’s posting information and advice, with curiosity first, wondering, “Hey, okay. Why is this triggering me?” and then compassion, it could be for yourself or for the other person, then all of a sudden, the dialogue changes within our community, and we are not attacking each other. I don’t know, maybe I just see the good, but once I posted in my stories. I don’t post a lot about my daily life, but I just happened to post a salad that I made that had iceberg lettuce in it, and I received a DM saying, “How dare you post Iceberg lettuce?” You are a woman with a doctorate degree, and we are following you for science-backed information. That is disgusting.” Those were the words. And I will never forget that DM. And my response to that was “It was on sale.” I have three kids. I usually have arugula, and I usually have other things, but it was on sale that week. And really, is that what we are bringing ourselves down to?

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I love that you shared that because I have so many examples of that. What comes to my mind is, this was several years ago, and I posted a picture of my kids and I outside on a beautiful night with a fire, and we were roasting marshmallows. And oh my gosh, the onslaught about how on earth I could be promoting that any child eat marshmallows, and now I just sort of laugh about it, because I realize: That’s about the other person. If you are so significantly triggered by something like that, that’s something to examine for yourself, “Why am I so triggered by that?”, and also probably some issue around expecting perfection of yourself, that you are never going to attain, and therefore you hold everybody else around you to perfection that they’re never going to attain, right? And so I think the whole idea here is really we need to let go of this idea of perfection around any of this. And you and I share a lot of research-based information, and we are not perfect with it. Nobody is, and we are not asking anybody to strive for that. This is just about having better information so you can make better choices when you are able to do that. There is absolutely no perfection necessary or even possible in all of this.

Dr. Cindy Hovington

I think when we leave the hospital with our children, somebody should tell us, look us straight in the eyes, and say “There’s no such thing as a perfect parent”, because we need to know that. We have maybe parents and in-laws on us, testing or observing everything that we are doing and bringing their comments, and if we can just have that confidence that “I need to do what works best for my family, I will never be perfect.”, and it’s okay, I post my errors and my mistakes within my home too, because I want parents to know that even if I’m sharing the information that I learned in research, it doesn’t mean that I could apply it all the time. Yelling is one of those things that comes up very often with parents. We have guilt around yelling, and I get it, because we yell at our children more than anybody else, probably, and there’s a lot of guilt around that. But children will not respond the same way as an adult will. A child might have a tantrum, and we might be tired that day or stressed that day. If we kind of start observing our own needs, then we will understand a little bit more why we responded to a child that way. And it’s okay to yell. Obviously, what I try to help parents with is about emotion regulation skills. If you can control and manage your own emotions, then you can help teach your child that. But in all of that mess of the day, in the chaos, there will be moments that you get frustrated, there will be moments that you lose your cool, and that’s fine. But I don’t know, I like the 80/20 rule for everything, life, business, and parenting, right? It just works everywhere. And I think that we can do the same thing as parents where whatever information we see — Screen time, if you read “Don’t give a tablet, wherever, in the restaurant or in the car.” If there’s a day where your child just doesn’t want to get into the car and you are going to be late for an appointment or for work, get the tablet, it’s okay. You cannot apply everything that you read, every single moment in parenting. And that’s what parents have to know as well.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

So good. Absolutely. Let’s delve into a bit of the science and some of your favorite topics around this. I want to start with all the years that you have spent in neuroscience research and parenting and all that, what do you feel is the most important piece of advice from the science, for a parent to start implementing? If there was one thing that you would say, “Okay, this is a thing that I think is valuable for us all to focus on”, what would it be?

Dr. Cindy Hovington

It’s hard to focus on one thing, but I do want to talk about parenting styles. So there are two things that are really important, emotion regulation skills, which is managing your emotions, but let’s talk about parenting styles because it fits all together. But I think back to how I was parented, and again, my parents didn’t know any better. And then my mom became a single mom. They parented very strictly. It was all about boundaries and limits, and “I’m not your friend”, and “You have no say”, and “This is how it is in my house”. And again, they weren’t doing it in a malicious kind of way. But now we know from research that there’s authoritarian parenting, where it’s all about rules and there’s no warmth and connection and empathy from the parent. But the kinder parenting, the authoritative parenting is balancing those limits and boundaries because children need limits and boundaries. I actually had a really good discussion with somebody about this, which I’ll talk about, but balancing the boundaries and limits with the warmth and connection, children need both of those. They need to be nurtured, but they also need to be guided through limits. And the reason why I wanted to bring this as well, is because a parent was arguing with me the other day saying that limits and boundaries cause mental illness and that there’s research around this. And so I created a post around it this week actually, on Instagram. And so you can look at the studies. And what happens is that there’s something called permissive parenting, which is all about the warmth and the connection. And I think this is a really big misconception right now in parenting advice that we see out there. There’s a lot of talk about conscious parenting, positive parenting and attachment parenting, whatever you want to call it.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Peaceful parenting, gentle parenting. Yes.

Dr. Cindy Hovington

Yes, right. But all of those, the misconception is that we have to be our child’s best friend, and anything goes, and when we talk about showing warmth and connection and empathy, that it doesn’t matter if they hit their sibling, we are just like “We are there for you”, and “I’ll be there for you.” That’s not what authoritative parenting is. I get that mixed up, authoritarian is being strict and authoritative is balancing the warmth with the boundaries. So that’s the misconception, we don’t want it to just be warmth and connection, because a child will not know where to set their limits. And what’s going to happen is, as they’re older, without these boundaries, they’re going to struggle with their emotions and with mental health at that point, because when something uncomfortable happens, they will know how to navigate that and internally. So I really want parents to know that when we talk about the kind of parenting that leads to a child thriving and doing well in school, there’s a lot of research around this type of parenting style. You really do have to bring in the boundaries. And I know that it makes kids uncomfortable, and it makes us parents uncomfortable as well. I only started setting boundaries for myself as an adult maybe five years ago. Honestly, I had never been taught about boundaries as a child. And I was a “Yes, yes”, to everything person. I just wanted to make people happy. Now I understand that it came from my own way of parenting, and it was so strict and I had no say. So as an adult, I thought I had no say, and I became a person that just did whatever people wanted. I had no boundaries. But the more I started setting boundaries, the better my mental health became, and the stronger my relationships became with people, because I was able to set my boundaries with friends and family and say, “No, you know what? I’m not taking this phone call from this particular family member. I know it’s going to end up in a not-so-great conversation. So I’m not answering right now.” Those are important for us, and it starts as a child, with our children seeing their boundaries, that they can’t just have a box of cookies before bed if that’s your boundary in your home. No, we will leave them to discomfort, to cry, to have a tantrum. But you need to maintain this boundary, as uncomfortable as you are. And if you really, really are struggling maintaining boundaries, I spoke with a therapist, and then I read some books. There’s a book about boundaries, I forget who the author is, but it’s a really great book.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

[inaudible 0:28:05.2]

Dr. Cindy Hovington

Yes, yes. That one. There are ways that we can learn how to do it, it’s always — I’m still working on it. Sometimes I give in and I regret it immediately. But we have to work on that, it’s really important.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I think it’s interesting that somebody came at you saying that boundaries in parenting lead to mental health problems for kids later on, because as you are saying, and I just want to be clear about this: Absolutely the opposite is true. Yes. And kids are just in a permissive environment, where parents are allowing them to have and do whatever they want. That’s actually super anxiety-provoking for kids to go, “Wait a second. I’m a little person, and I’m being allowed to be in charge of everything. Where are the guardrails? Who’s in charge? Who can I look to for safety, for helping me manage?” And so it’s really important for adults to understand that yes, we can be warm and empathic, but kids also absolutely need those boundaries. And for all of you listening, who have children who may be neurodivergent or developmentally delayed or have some unique developmental things going on, this all stands true for you, too. I think this is another misconception, and frankly, it’s been perpetuated by professionals around, “Well, you have a child with X,Y or Z diagnosis, therefore, the typical ways of parenting don’t apply to you.” Well, wait a minute. They absolutely do, whether your child has severe emotional and behavioral dysregulation issues, significant mental health issues, neurodevelopmental disabilities — this balanced style of warmth and support with expectations and boundaries is absolutely still the foundation of being a good parent to your child, regardless of their needs. And I just think that’s so important because parents get really bad information sometimes about this, particularly if you have a child who’s been diagnosed as autistic or with a related kinds of issue, unfortunately, parents are often advised to go very much into the either heavy authoritarian, “You have no control or say”, everything is very much controlled for them, or the other direction of “Don’t upset them, they have disabilities, let them be.” And both have real problems. And so what you are talking about is this balanced approach is key for all kids.

Dr. Cindy Hovington

And the degree of warmth that you will show will change, right? So I’ve had parents reach out to me and say “You talk about warmth, sensitivity and connecting with your child, but my child…”, they had a neurodivergent child with oppositional defiant disorder, and she said that with her child, that connection, it wasn’t — because I would talk about 10 minutes of connection. With her, it was an afternoon of connection on weekends. And without that afternoon, she would struggle with her child’s behavior. But she noticed that when she did apply it, it made a big difference. So that’s what I also want parents to know that yes, every child is different, and every parent is different. But this sort of guide for how you are going to parent will make a big difference. And then you have to test little things with your child. 10 minutes a day after dinner might help with bedtime, because you have connected with your child. And all of a sudden, now when it’s time to go to bed, yes, they’re going to be upset, but then you show them that’s the boundary and they move forward. That might help with one child, and with another child that might be different. But you are still balancing that warmth with the limits and the boundaries in your home. And there are lots of studies as well showing that authoritarian parenting that’s all about rules and limits leads to higher levels of conduct disorders between the ages of five and seven. And it’s not to say everybody, the correlations, the relationships, but they do see that, because they’re missing that connection and that warmth from you.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Absolutely. So good. I want to delve into a little bit about research around kids’ brains, brain development, and things that as both a neuroscientist and a parent you feel would be helpful for parents to understand about their child’s brain development, because when we understand some of those things that actually helps us to be more empathic to meet these that met our expectations. So what do you feel are some of the key things that parents need to understand about what’s going on in a child’s brain?

Dr. Cindy Hovington

The frontal lobe, which is right behind your forehead, is something I like to talk about, because it’s developing and it’ll continue to develop until about the age of 25. So I want parents to know that this part of the brain helps you to kind of think things through, it’s being rational. And what happens is around the age of one and a half, or one, or even up to two, that child starts having these tantrums. Some might not. There’s actually a small percentage of children that don’t have tantrums. I know parents don’t believe me, but it exists, but on average, children will start to have these big emotions around that age, and that’s because the amygdala, the emotions part of the brain is functioning very well, and it’s experiencing frustration, and disappointment, and anger, and sadness. And then that part of the brain talks to the frontal lobe and says, “Hey, I’m frustrated right now, what do I do with this?” And the frontal lobe being only one and a half, says, “Well, I don’t know what to do with it. Let’s just smash the blocks”, versus us as adults. We could be at the office and our boss tells us something that we don’t agree with, and the amygdala will be frustrated and ask the frontal lobe, “What do I do?”, and it’s like, “Well walk away.” So there’s a very big difference in that development. And that part is so important. In addition, in that sort of network connected to the amygdala for emotions is the sensory part of the brain. And I want parents to know that, because I myself didn’t realize that one of my emotional triggers was sensation, there was a lot of noise around me. I didn’t know this. I mean, I went to concerts when I was younger and before kids, and only after having kids around four-ish, I would say, at night. There’s been times when I’m home during the day with my three kids who are two, four and six. So at some point, that noise level, I just don’t know, I reached my threshold. And so me reaching that threshold means that at some point, I’m probably going to yell because I no longer have control of my emotions. It’s that trigger for me. Same thing happens with the kids. So sometimes a lot of kids come back from preschool or daycare or school, and you will notice a difference in their behavior around that time, it’s because their sensory cup or that part of the brain is overstimulated. It could be because of a lot of noise at school, it could be because of a lot of screen time if they happen to have it. So any of the senses that we have could be overstimulated, and then we noticed behavior changes in our kids. So if a parent is noticing this after school or daycare, I asked them to take note first. If you are seeing behaviors with your child, take note. And then if you notice it’s happening around that, try to maybe bring down the lights or no screen time when you get home, or quiet time for 10 minutes with just the book or something. Something. It depends. Every child is different, again. So just be aware of that, be aware that the sensory part is connected to the emotions, and then emotion go and ask the frontal lobe, “What do I do with this?” So it’s an entire network that really makes a difference for kids. So once we understand that network, we could say, “Hey I’m seeing these big emotions in my child right now. But I get it, I get that they can’t control them. It’s not their fault.” And I like coming down to my child’s level, because I don’t want to be hovering over them. I come down, and I ask them, “Are you having trouble right now with your emotions? You asked for the blue cup, and I gave you the blue cup”, and they’re crying. And for us as adults, we see that as being ridiculous. I gave you exactly what you wanted. It’s like asking your colleague for file number 552, and then they give it to you, and then you just throw it on the floor and you are mad, right?” It’s not logical for adults. But when we place ourselves in our children’s shoes, and inside their brain, we can understand that the amygdala had an emotion, and we have to act as their frontal lobe. We have to act as the rational part of the brain, because it hasn’t developed enough yet. And then the more we act as the rational part of the brain, as we model this, as they get older, they will start taking over and they will see how we did it. And then those parts of their brain will continue to develop and hopefully things will improve.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I’m so glad you raised this. Two things that come to mind around this, the first is that we tend to think of kids from a brain standpoint as being mini adults, and we set expectations for their behavior or their responses to things in accordance with how we think about it. And so what’s so important about what you are saying is, wait a minute, no, they literally don’t have the brain connections in the frontal lobe to do that. And quite frankly, if we look at the behavior of a lot of adults, especially these days, there’s a lot of adults who aren’t doing too hot in that category either. So it’s about setting our expectations in accordance with developmentally where our kids brain is, and setting an expectation for a two year old around how long we expect them to wait for something, or what we expect from a communication or response is going to be different than a 10 year old or than a 20 year old. And so I think that piece about understanding where their brain development is, in order to have reasonable expectations for them is really important. And then the second piece of that, especially for parents listening, who have a child who maybe in one or more areas of their development is delayed, particularly if you have a child with what we call executive function issues, whether they’re diagnosed with ADHD, or autism, or learning disability, or certain types of behavioral disorders: You need to think about them in terms of their developmental stage of their brain and not their chronological age. You may have a kid with severe ADHD who chronologically is 10, but their frontal lobe, like Cindy, what you are talking about with these connections and their frontal lobe being able to regulate their emotions may still be a three-year-old. And we have to set our expectations appropriately for their developmental level and help them grow from there, as opposed to just continuing to expect them and their brain to manage things at their chronological level, which may not be reasonable for them.

Dr. Cindy Hovington

Yeah, exactly. You mentioned attention and executive function. I want to bring that up as another one, that these two, we tend to have really high expectations for our kids: attention span. I’ll get parents who say “I have an 18-month-old and I just want them to play for 20 minutes, what’s wrong with them?” And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with them. I haven’t found the right equation yet. There’s no equation in research, but to have the sort of guide, take your child’s age and turn it into minutes. So let’s say a one year old is one minute, and then add three to maybe five-ish minutes to that, and that’s their attention span. So when you are focused on something, and that takes a lot of brainpower, by the way, so attention span is if “I’m focusing on something, I also have to ignore other things.” That’s what the brain has to do, and that takes time to develop. So even with your four-year-old, it’s only a few minutes, it’s under 10 minutes. And it’s okay if they’re doing that. You have to kind of train that. And as they get older, and you sit down a little bit longer, if you know that they could sit down for one book, try to read maybe a few pages from another book. Up to half, up to a second book. Bring it up slowly, but don’t have these expectations that they could sit there for 20 minutes during your meeting and not move and not talk. It’s not the reality. And then the second one is executive function skills. I think, closer to the age of starting school, I’ll hear from parents that tell me “During the morning, they’re not ready, they don’t have their school bag packed. They don’t follow the routine of brushing your teeth and then getting ready and getting dressed. That is a skill. Executive functions are a skill. So whether your child is struggling with this or not, you can still introduce little things during the day, like little visuals to help your child or little cues. Anything, even when you are going to the grocery store, you could say, “Hey, can you remember apples, bananas, and pears?”, and have that as their task and see if they remind you like, “Oh, you forgot your apples.” And if three items are not enough and they are remembering it very well, bring it up. Bring it up to five or six, but bring those challenges on in your child’s life. And remember that these cognitive skills are skills, and we need to help our child with that.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I love it. So good. And that then branches off into a whole conversation about why so many kids struggle in school nowadays, because the developmental expectations of kindergarten, first grade, second grade are so out of alignment with what’s appropriate to expect from younger kids, which maybe you and I will have that conversation on the show another day. I know we are going to need to wrap up here. I have one more question before we tell people where they can find out more about you. I’m just curious about this, with all the research that you delve into and look at on a regular basis: What’s one of the most interesting studies or topics or something that you have come across lately, in looking at the research on parenting on kids, something that piqued your interest?

Dr. Cindy Hovington

We are going to switch it to play, because this is something that I have realized recently, and I’m trying to educate parents about this: educational toys, educational apps. Our definition in society is the complete opposite of what they defined in research, and this could be another whole discussion. But educational toys are not toys that sing ABC’s. And companies are going to hate me, but here’s the thing: An educational toy, in research, is defined as something that increases the interaction between the child and the caregiver. So if you have a singing bear, remove the batteries and play pretend with it. So it’s not completely gone, whatever toy you have. And it’s not bad. Nothing is bad or good. It’s always good in the gray zone. You can have some of these toys, but I want parents to know that an educational app is not necessarily something that will teach your child how to read at two years old. And this is so important to me as a topic because I think that we keep putting the bar up for kids, and I keep getting parents asking me — I was just actually interviewed for a magazine the other day, and they wanted to know signs of a smart child at 18 months. Is it because they’ve reached developmental milestones so early? And as I said, before I answer any of these questions, I need to say: Here’s where I stand because a child is walking right before a certain age, it’s not that they’re smarter. And that word, “smart”, what is smart? If you look at research, as well, you have to be creative, and you have to be flexible in your thinking, you have to manage emotions. Managing emotions is literally what they include in the definition of a child who will thrive and succeed and who’s intelligent. Because if you cannot sit in the classroom and feel disappointed and not lash out, you are going to struggle with relationships, with work. So these educational toys, they’re marketing them very well, and they are making us think that we need to have all of them within our home. We don’t. We think back to ourselves, to myself growing up, we were outside all the time. True educational play is open-ended. It’s going outside, it’s being in the home and exploring, it’s having toys, building blocks, and Legos, and whatever it is. Open ended means that it’s not a button that you press and it does one function. And this is something so dear to me because we have completely changed what play is, and we have done it because of commercialism and everything that’s being placed in front of us, making us think that’s what they need. A child could play with an empty Kleenex box, and they’re developing and we are supporting their development. They can play with rocks and mud outside, and we are supporting their development. Being bored? Please let children be bored. They really need it. That’s where thinking outside the box and creativity are. Give them freedom, we tend to hover also as parents, and I did it too with my firstborn. You would play with them, and instead of letting them take control of play — They are masters of play, by the way. They know exactly what they want to do. And if we just step back and watch them play with the figurines, and say, “You could take the zebra and the giraffe”, and just slowly move into their little world, they might tell you, “Well, the Zebra is in charge, and the giraffe is the daddy”, or the mommy or whatever it is, and you just follow what they’re saying. But we tend to have everything so controlled in their environment, and organized activities, and follow the rules, and “follow this”, and there’s a three-year-old who has piano lessons and dance lessons. And we are like, “Why don’t they follow?” Because they want open ended play and they want freedom to play. And that’s what supports brain development.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Singing my song, I love it. We can talk for hours about this. I know we need to wrap up, I want to make our listeners know where they can go to find more about what you are doing and the resources you are offering.

Dr. Cindy Hovington

Yeah, so three places: They can visit curiousneuron.com to read the blog posts. I also collaborate with research labs from the United States, Canada, and in Europe. So if they want to participate in studies, there are studies there as well. There’s The Curious Neuron podcast, which is available on iTunes and all the other platforms. And on Instagram, it’s @curious_neuron, I post every day something, some tip that they can use. I try to make it as simple as possible. And like you said at the beginning too, my goal is to help parents nurture themselves first. So there’s a lot of talk about our past and how we were parented, and then to teach you how to nurture your child.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

You do such a great job with the resources you provide, especially your Instagram, it’s amazing, so I encourage everybody to go there. Thank you for all of the effort that you put into your work through Curious Neuron. It’s an amazing resource. So thank you for that. And thank you for being here and sharing all this with us today. Great conversation. We appreciate you.

Dr. Cindy Hovington

I loved it, thank you. Thanks, Nicole.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And thanks, as always, to all of you for being here and for listening. We will catch you back here next time.