Dads Matter

Speak to expecting fathers and you will undoubtedly find that today’s dads are far more eager to be actively involved in their children’s lives right from birth than fathers from previous generations. Yet, many of their good intentions and noble expectations seem to be quickly smothered and written off as idealistic after the baby is born.

The limelight is typically on the mother and baby during the early days and fathers often feel it would be inconsiderate or even inappropriate of them to admit that they feel like onlookers. Consequently most fathers soon find themselves in the role of “Mommy’s assistant”, as if they are second-class parents with Mommy as the expert; telling him what to do and how to do it. After all, she’s the one that spends the most time with Baby and she knows best, right?

The problem with this parenting approach is that it is so common that most people never stop to question it. Yet research shows that both the children and the family as a whole benefit when a father is given the opportunity to take on the role of an equal in the parenting arena.

Dr Kyle Pruett first encountered this gender bias and the consequences thereof when he began studying infants and toddlers raised by stay-at-home dads in stable families, where Mommy was the one with a 9 to 5 job and Daddy took care of the family and home during the day.

Almost all the fathers initially tried to mimic what they thought the mothers would do. Interestingly, they reported during interviews with Dr Pruett and his colleagues that these initial interactions with their children felt “wrong”. They said it “didn’t fit”, they “couldn’t get the rhythm”, and “relating to their children, they felt like socks that were too small”.

Sadly, in most typical families, fathers almost automatically accept this awkwardness as natural. They see this as proof that they somehow don’t possess the same level of ‘parental instincts’ as mothers do ... so they lose confidence and consequently settle down in the proverbial backseat.

The fathers in Dr Pruett’s study didn’t have that option. They had to push through as the mothers were simply not available during the day to take charge. The good news is that these fathers reaped the rewards of their perseverance.

Interestingly, even in these ‘modern’ households, where the mother and father switched their traditional roles, most of the dads feared that their wives would get upset when they find out that they weren’t following their instructions to the letter, so they didn’t share their feelings with the mothers.

Nonetheless, after 1 or 2 weeks of trying to be a replacement mom, they started to experiment with doing things their own way. Before long they were secretly changing, feeding, comforting, bathing, dressing, talking and singing with, carrying, and playing in ways they thought “fit us guys better”. Even after trying their utmost for as long as they could, it was simply not possible for them to deny the fact that as men they relate to their children in a unique way.

Researchers now know that the practical differences between the ways in which mothers and fathers parent are not harmful to children, mothers, fathers or their marriages. Whether dads are fulltime caregivers or not, they naturally interact with their children differently, and at the end of the day the big and small differences between mothers and fathers all fall into place like the pieces of a big puzzle.

In his book, Partnership Parenting (Da Capo Press, 2009), Dr Pruett tells of a group of Swedish scientist that systematically reviewed 22 studies, most of which involved typical families where the fathers were the ones bringing home the bacon. Not surprisingly, they found that father engagement is linked to a higher standard of living for families with lower incomes.

They also concluded that, regardless of income, fathers that spent more time with their children had sons with fewer behavioural problems. Their daughters were psychologically healthier and getting better grades, and both the sons and daughters in these households were less likely to get involved in criminal activities.

From a practical point of view this simply means everybody wins when a father is supported in his efforts to grow into what he naturally should become for his children: a father. Nobody just automatically knows how to be a parent – not even mothers. (If in doubt, ask any mother.) The reason why mothers usually come into their own within a few weeks is simply because that is exactly what society expects of them.

Most dads believe that things will get easier as the baby gets older, but in reality fathers who don’t get the space to find their own way with their children during the early years find it more difficult to bond with their offspring later on. And the road is even more uphill when a father is not physically living with the rest of the family, especially when he, for reasons within or beyond his control, act in ways that cause him to be labelled as ‘uninvolved’ or ‘irresponsible’. A label around a father’s neck can be heavier than balls and chains on his feet.

So, before throwing another stone at unmotivated and discouraged fathers, why not first focus on building their confidence and reassuring them that they are special in their differentness. As Dr Pruett says, “Whenever fathers and children have the space to figure out who they are to each other, without mothers micromanaging the relationship, children thrive and mothers get the break they need.”

Written by Lizette van Huyssteen
When we know better... we do better

Unborn Babies tune in to Mommies' Emotions

Picture from www.pregnancynbaby.com

During the past 30 years, revolutionary discoveries in genetics, neuroscience and developmental psychology have transformed our understanding of infant development. As a result, a new study field in psychology, called “Pre and Perinatal Psychology” has taken shape, and researchers in this field are working hard to help change the way most people view the unborn child and the role of the pregnant mother.

“We have underestimated for the longest time the mental and emotional development of unborn children. We know with absolute certainty today that at least by the end of the second trimester (and I am being very cautious here) the unborn child is a sensitive, feeling, aware and remembering human being,” says Dr Thomas Verny, who is a world renowned psychiatrist and the founder of the Association for Pre and Perinatal Development and Health (APPPAH).

Numerous studies indicate that everything a pregnant mother experiences, the air that she breathes, the stress in her life, what she drinks and eats, even her feelings and her thoughts; all of these things influence the development of the unborn child to a larger or a lesser degree, depending on the circumstances.

Consequently, pregnant mothers are no longer viewed as “living incubators”, but rather as active participators in the development of their unborn children. Furthermore, since fathers play such an important role in most mothers’ lives, they are also more important during the prenatal period than previously imagined. Clearly, being a good parent starts long before a new baby gives his first cry.

One of the interesting studies that have recently made headlines proved that unborn babies pick up on their mothers’ mood. Researchers at the Nagasaki University in Japan carefully recorded and analyzed the arm, leg and body movements of 24 unborn babies with the help of an ultra-sound scanner while the mothers of these babies were watching television. Ten of the mothers viewed an upbeat five-minute clip from the Julie Andrews musical, The Sound of Music, while the rest were shown a tear-jerking five minutes from a movie oy crying at the death of his father.

Earlier studies, such as those done by Dr Sheila Woodward in the early 90’s, showed that recordings of music and voices played at an average volume about two metres away from a pregnant mother are audible inside the womb and that unborn babies respond to the sounds they hear. With this in mind, the Nagasaki researchers asked the mothers in their study to wear headphones to make sure that their unborn babies weren’t influenced by the soundtracks. They also “sandwiched” each of the emotional clips between two extracts of neutral programs to make it easier for them to detect any changes in the babies’ movements.

Interestingly, the fetuses moved their arms significantly more enthusiastically during the happy clip, while the unborn babies of the mothers who watched the sad scene moved significantly less than they normally do.

Why is this important?

The number of brain cells, called neurons, in a baby’s brain increases at a staggering rate during the prenatal period; from 1 to 100 billion in a matter of 40 weeks. The basic structure of the wiring between the neurons is genetically determined, but the finer details depend largely on a child’s experiences. In other words, a baby who gets to listen to music during pregnancy and early on in life, while the brain is still being wired, will develop more connections between brain cells in those areas of the brain that are pre-destined to process music than a baby who is rarely exposed to music. As a result, the first baby will not only recognise the particular genre of music that he has been exposed to; he will also indicate by his behaviour that he prefers listening to it.

Similarly, a baby that gets to spend the first nine months of his life developing inside the womb of a mother who is a happy, relaxed and positive kind of person, will be better “wired for happiness” at birth than he would be otherwise.

Luckily, we know that our window of opportunity doesn’t end at birth, or 40 weeks after conception. A child’s brain remains extremely malleable and impressionable up to their third birthday, and for many practical purposes throughout the first seven years of life; so much so that educators often refer to the first seven years as the “formative years”.

As Dr Verny says, “The brain is sensitive to experience throughout life, but experience during the critical periods of prenatal and early postnatal life organizes the brain.”

Written by Lizette van Huyssteen

When we know better... we do better

Inspiring Quote

"While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about."

Angela Schwindt

When we know better... we do better

How to lay the Foundation for Future Happiness in your Child

Image from www.infpblog.com

“How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most." ― Stephen R. Covey

As human beings we are all involved in creative processes whether we know it or not and, quite frankly, whether we like it or not.

When we get to create something from scratch by putting pieces together, like when building a house or recording a piece of music, we may choose to first build a two-room home, live there for a year or two, and then add more rooms.

Or a musician can record a song with guitar backing only, and add more instruments later on. In these instances one can take one’s time, learn as you go along and add a bit here and there when you feel like it. You can pretty much allow your level of effort be dictated by how much money and energy you have available at that point in time. No harm done.

Unfortunately, in many other instances, this approach doesn’t work. Some creative processes are more like baking a cake:  there are certain basic ingredients that simply have to be added; a certain balance needs to be maintained in the system or else the whole thing will, well … flop.

The baker has limited scope to add some of his own flair to the process. For the most part, he simply needs to respect the “big picture” of what it takes to bake a cake.

I can think of at least two creative processes that parents are responsible for that fall into the “recipe” category:

1. Building a child’s brain: If you’re visiting this blog and you’re not familiar with the Practica Program, it will probably serve you well to visit www.practicaprogram.co.za to find out more about this valuable system, which basically empowers parents by offering them a complete big picture and step-by-step guide for building young brains – complete with all the ingredients in correct measure and balance and how to add them year by year as time goes by.

AND

2. Laying the foundations for future happiness in a child: Similarly, laying the foundations for future happiness in a child is not a project that responds well to a touch-and-go, slapdash, or “we’ll-fix-it-when-we-get-to-it” approach.

So imagine my delight when I stumbled on a five sentence summary of what is described as the “basic factors making for happiness in the human mind”.

It felt as if bells where ringing in my head. Yay! The “big picture” of how we can radically raise our children’s changes of growing into happy adults!

What really caught my attention was that this strikingly complete “big picture” was (1) coming from the mouth of the famous psychologist, Carl Jung; (2) given to us when he was 85 years old, after all that he has experienced and when he was close to the end of his remarkable life and (3) shared during an interview with utmost confidence and clarity in response to a question to which a vague, off-the-cuff answer would probably also had sufficed. . . 

Here is the quote as I found it on the Happiness Project:

In 1960, journalist Gordon Young asked Jung, "What do you consider to be more or less basic factors making for happiness in the human mind?" Jung answered with five elements:

1) Good physical and mental health.

2) Good personal and intimate relationships, such as those of marriage, the family, and friendships.

3) The faculty for perceiving beauty in art and nature.

4) Reasonable standards of living and satisfactory work.

5) A philosophic or religious point of view capable of coping successfully with the vicissitudes of life.

Here’s what I advise you to do to make this knowledge work for you:
 

Sit down and think through each of these factors. What choices are you making (both deliberately and unintentionally) in your own life to either sabotage or invest in each of these five happiness factors?  Giving attention to whether or not we as parents are relatively happy in ourselves is like keeping the kitchen clean in which our child’s “happiness cake” is taking shape.

Now think about how your child is doing with regards to each of Carl Jung’s happiness factors? Here are a few examples of questions that you may want to ask yourself:

1.    Are you making it easy for your child to adopt healthy eating habits? Are you setting an example by exercising regularly? With regards to mental health, are you teaching your child to take responsibility for his or her own emotions?  

2.    What are you (intentionally or unintentionally) teaching your child about relationships? Have you practically taught him how to hold a conversation as yet? Make friends? Maintain ties with family? Or does he constantly hear you criticize friends and family when they’re not around? The list can go on and on ….
 

3.    How are you fostering an appreciation of beauty in art and nature in your child? Do you expose him or her to various kinds of music, art and cultural styles? Are you taking your child on trips to the country and encouraging him to spend time in nature? 
 

4.    Are you investing in developing your child’s brain tools and his future learning abilities? Are doing what is necessary to develop his talents and take care of “weaknesses” while he is still young and his brain is still developing? (Three hoorahs for the Practica Program!) 

5.    Are you letting your child into your spiritual world? What are you teaching your child about faith as he watches you live your life? How much input does he receive in this regards compared to, say, the amount of time that he spends in front of the television on a weekly basis?

All parents face situations every now and then on their parenting journey that call for them to make decisions that are bound to impact their children’s lives to a large degree. Examples of this include when we choose a caregiver for our baby or toddler, decide on a school for our older kids and when we have to exclude certain extra-curricular activities to make a child’s weekly schedule more child-friendly.

I believe that Carl Jung’s happiness factors can be used as a wonderfully practical tool to help parents make decisions that are truly in their child’s best interest. Oh, how I love it when things come together with real meaning!

Written by Lizette van Huyssteen

When we know better... we do better

Inspiring Quote

"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye."

Another favourite from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

When we know better... we do better

Love, Respect and Confidence

Professionals who do school readiness tests often comment on the quiet and unshakable confidence that our Practica children have when they are faced with the typical challenges that unnerve other children of the same age. This is remarkable, especially since there are so many other really talented children who are lacking in confidence. In fact, many clever children become afraid of failure over time and as a result they tend to avoid challenges instead of “laughing in the face of danger”.  

The good news is that the Practica Program provides parents with thousands of little learning opportunities that are so easily interwoven into a daily routine, allowing parents and children to play together more often than they would otherwise have done. One activity leads to the next, and the activities become progressively more challenging. This teaches Practica children that trying, failing and trying again is part of learning and getting ahead. Being confident has a lot more to do with failing and learning to be patient with yourself than most parents think. 

I guess this is why I just loved the following quote when a good friend shared it with me last week. I searched, but although she said she had read it online, I cannot find the original source. It reads as follows:

Patience with family is LOVE

Patience with others is RESPECT

Patience with yourself is CONFIDENCE.

The more I think about these words, the more I am impacted by how true they are. As I think back over the time that I had with my children when they were little, I realize that it was definitely during the times when I expected too much of myself that I was also most impatient and my confidence levels reached an all-time low.

What makes me sad is that those were also often the times when I was most impatient with my children, and it was the most difficult time for me to let them feel my love for them. Also, as I count back the years and link different incidences and experiences, I realize that it was during those exact times that my husband didn't feel loved and respected.

I don't know if this is true for everyone, but in my case, the biggest lesson that I learn from these wise words is that expecting too much from myself won't impress the people that I love. It doesn't make them love me more or somehow make me more "worthy" of their respect. It simply deprives them of the love and respect that I would otherwise be able to give to them.  

Written by Lizette van Huyssteen

When we know better... we do better

Spending Time with Children

“Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly." G.K.Chesterton

Spending time with children is in many ways like eating carrots. While some people naturally love it, other people will consciously have to work at getting used to it - especially if one hasn't done it for a while. However, whether it comes naturally or not, doing it is exceptionally good for you.

There are so many different micronutrients in vegetables that it is difficult for scientists to identify them all, let alone reproduce them in pill form. Similarly, people who regularly spend quality time with children benefit from these experiences in countless ways.

One of the benefits of children is that they are able to live in the moment, laugh easily and be playful without feeling silly. As we grow into adulthood many of us lose the ability to laugh, to have a sense of humour, and ‘to take ourselves lightly’. People, who allow themselves to connect with children on their level and get into their world, find it much easier to reconnect with their own ‘inner child’.

The good news is that our bodies naturally release ‘feel-good hormones’ called endorphins into our systems when we laugh out loud. So laughing with children allows you to tap into a powerful resource that is known to relieve physical tension and stress, boost the immune system and protect the heart, both physically and figuratively.

In fact, Norman Cousins tells in his book Anatomy of an Illness, how he was cured of a potentially fatal illness by watching comedy movies. He literally used laughter as therapy. Children laugh so freely and easily that being around them can be described as being in a “therapy zone”.

We can learn a great deal from extensive studies done by the World Health Organization into the lifestyles of communities that are well-known for their longevity, such as the Italian community of Campodimele, the Hunza of Pakistan, and the Okinawans who live on islands near Japan.

What do these communities have in common that cause them to enjoy a life expectancy 20-30 years higher than the rest of us?

Not surprisingly, they eat sparingly of a largely plant-based diet and their daily exercise incorporates physical activity such as gardening and walking. But most interestingly, another similar pattern that was found in all of these very special communities is that they typically live in close family units of five generations living under one roof. As a result, adults get to interact with little children often and for most of their lives.

They live simply and slowly as they provide their children with healthy boundaries and enough emotional stability and security that will sustain them throughout their lives. According to the researchers they typically live out their lives “singing, eating joyfully and living in peace with themselves and with the environment”.

To many of us this sounds like an impossible dream. But is it really? Even though many facets of our world are far removed from this picture, there is at least one wonderful component that we have in common with these privileged communities: our children start off just as innocent and playful as theirs and they have just as much to offer us. The only difference is how we guide them and how we allow them to impact our lives.

The lesson to take from this is that in life, truly, less is more. If we haven’t learnt this from other sources, let’s allow our children to teach us the practicals.

Regardless of your religious views, I believe the following words written by G.K. Chesterton, from his famous book Orthodoxy, apply to all of us:

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." 

Written by Lizette van Huyssteen
When we know better... we do better