PARENTS SHOULD STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THEIR KIDS
Trust your instincts, advises Dr. Stephen Camarata, a psychiatry professor and author of The Intuitive Parent
Dr. Stephen Camarata wants parents to chill out.
In his book The Intuitive Parent: Why the Best Thing for
Your Child is You, the professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University makes a case for learning to trust our instincts again. Over the past decade, he’s noticed a significant increase in parents feeling anxiety and guilt over how to give kids the best start in life.
That’s a paradox given that it’s arguably the safest time in history in which to raise kids, he writes. (Between 1926 and 2011, child mortality has declined 98 per cent among children ages 1 to 4, according to Statistics Canada data, for instance.) Yet, we’ve become “petrified” by the consequences of our everyday parenting decisions, says Camarata.
Plus, a burgeoning industry of programs, apps and other products marketed as necessities for raising smart and healthy kids have made us lose confidence, says the father of seven.
Here’s what he had to say when he talked to the Star:
What changes in the way we raise our kids today prompted you to write The Intuitive Parent?
Just playing with and interacting with our children is the foundation of their intellectual ability, self-confidence, relationship with parents and natural curiosity. All of those wondrous things are being displaced by a rush to accelerate academic learning. This whole idea of taking a child basically from the crib and preparing them for school is a really bad thing for our children. And the worst thing is that parents are so stressed out. It’s not so much that the kids will then not develop properly as it is that the parents are stressing out unnecessarily about building the perfect baby brain, and it is interfering with natural interactions that are part of the parent-child relationship.
How has an explosion in often-conflicting information about raising kids contributed to parental anxiety?
There’s a lot out there and parents have to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong. I look at websites promising to boost children’s IQ with brain games and they’re really not vetted by science, but yet they’re written in a way that persuades parents this is something they should be doing. Parents already come to the world with everything they need to raise their children in a really positive, loving way.
We’ve heard a lot in recent years about how “the years before 5 last the rest of their lives.” Have we gotten too panicked and literal about this, especially given that, in reality, brain development continues into the early 20s?
Let me first say that the idea of giving your child a variety of experiences — a variety of toys to play with, trips to the zoo, the park, the woods — is really positive. On the other hand, if you’re saying you have to wire their brain to sit at a desk and do worksheets before they’re 5, that’s insanity. I think there’s a misunderstanding here about what the science actually tells us. There’s learning that goes on after the age of 5, too.
What does it mean to be an intuitive parent?
It means shutting out the noise, setting aside your fears and being with your child; paying attention to them, tuning into them and responding to them as you naturally would. It means listening to that inner voice, instead of trying to drag your child through development on someone else’s agenda, which is what’s happening.
So instead of using flash cards and educational apps, what should parents do?
There’s this whole notion that, if we just buy the right products, we can make our children into super children. Again, the most important, foundational thing is to pay attention to your child and respond to them; let them lead sometimes. The next step is to encourage problem solving and thinking ability.
The way you do that is not with worksheets or problems. Let them explore and let them meet the materials and use them in a way they naturally relate to it. You don’t want to walk them through a set of blocks. Give the child the chance to play with them in their own way.
How does this compare to the micromanaging ways of the helicopter parent and the laissez-faire approach of the freerange parent?
If you’re a helicopter parent, where you’re micromanaging every bit of development, that doesn’t fit with intuitive parenting. But if you seek a high level of engagement, that can fit. As for free-range, this allows for that freedom but doesn’t include all the risk.
What is the one thing you wish you could say to every parent leaving the hospital with a baby today?
Believe in yourself. You can do this. You can be such an amazing parent if you just leave the guilt and the anxiety behind and be with your child.