- how can hyper attentive parenting hurt kids - raising children can be at risk to your health - [[u.s. surgeon general issues advisory on the mental health and well-being of parents]] - toxic stress - low-level persistent chronic stress - health care providers checking on mental health of parents - be helpful in small amounts to parents. Parents must be more receptive to help - intensive parenting - parents today spend more time with and money on their children than previous generations - aimed at optimizing a child's development and future prospects. - Sharon Hayes defines intensive parenting as - child-centered - expert guided - emotionally absorbing - labor intensive - financial expensive - kids must be constantly educated and engaged - feeling parenting is a 24-hour job - your kids will grow The only thing you need to do is provide a safe, supportive environment and basic necessities. - rationale for intensive parenting - started as upper middle class, now considered the optimum way to parent across race and economics - economic insecurity - your kids having it better than you is no longer a given. So you have to optimize your kids. - parents are afraid of raising kids that won't be able to support themselves - What are the gradients of intensive parenting? Give me actions that would be at different levels of intensive parenting. - what are the basic minimums of parenting? - society is concerned so much about a college degree #doubt - changes in parenting - '70s: free range - `parenting` was not something parents did - rise of dual income families - independent childhood - Kids occupied themselves while parents did adult things - progressives made early attempts to subsidize child care - what were these attempts? - parenting established as an individual responsibility - '80s: supervision, safetyism, & experts - listen to experts over own intuition - more hands-on parenting - explosion in parenting books `experts` - helicopter parenting: children had to be constantly watched in supervised - hovering over kids - safetyism - physical safety parents needed to be there if you fell out of a tree - supervision is safety #doubt - You're always supposed to be protecting your children - couple high profile child abductions - Why were they so emphasized by the media? What changed? Media sensationalism, increased focus on dramatic events. - "It's 10:00 p.m. do you know where your children are" - where did this come from? - '90s: optimize through neuroscience - ballooning responsibility to shape early outcomes - responsibility to mold your child's brain - neuroscience research on parental impacts on children's brains - a child's brain is moldable and therefore impactable by how you parent - every interaction with child is shaping them and to who they will become - early exposure to education can mold brains - child should hear 30 million words by age 3 - 42 family sample size - baby Mozart in womb - birth to 3 are the most important and affect who you child becomes - aces: exposure to trauma and stress can affect them as an adult - working mothers today spend as much time with their children as stay at home mothers in the '70s - healthy parenting boundaries - separation of children from parent leisure time - parents are neglecting their sleep and health - time focused on parent's non-child relationships - having an identity outside being a parent - take time to specifically not be an intensive parent to rely on your AIDS like TV, family, or paid help - how to reduce parenting judgment - parenting advice go with your gut but reflect - know your identity - know what you want you and your family stand for - [ ] list all the parenting stressors - could intensive parenting be worth it? - reduction of child resilience in Independence and self-sufficiency - How good is the science connecting lack of childhood independence with mental health crisis? - kids raised under intensive parents are closer to their parents. - Is this because of dependence possibly overdependence? - I believe I cannot optimize my child. I believe that parenting is like gardening more than carpentry. You need to give them a couple things and they'll become what they are naturally meant to. Planted in the right spot, they can get enough loving rays of sun, they'll draw resources from the soil you till through your good examples (food, hygiene, social, helpful). The environment might be rough, they'll get blown around and things might take a chunk out of them, but they'll grow. ### Conversation with Isaac - parents are more active in their kids life - read to your children - isaac resent parents effort to put structures around him to help with executive functioning - parents wing it and they have these fears -