← The Pediatrician Next Door - Simple Advice on Parenting and Family Health
The Pediatrician Next Door - Simple Advice on Parenting and Family Health
Ep. 146: Can Kids Balance Peer Pressure with Their Values?
00:31:46
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- [00:01]
Narrator/Host
Close your eyes.
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Dr. Wendy Hunter
Exhale.
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Narrator/Host
Feel your body relax and let go.
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Dr. Wendy Hunter
Of whatever you're carrying today.
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- [00:16]
Dr. Wendy Hunter
And breathe.
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Dr. Erica Bocknik
Oh, sorry.
- [00:18]
Advertiser/1-800-Contacts Spokesperson
I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order.
- [00:22]
Dr. Erica Bocknik
Oh, sorry.
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Advertiser/1-800-Contacts Spokesperson
Namaste.
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Dr. Wendy Hunter
Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order.
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Dr. Erica Bocknik
1-800-Contacts.
- [00:31]
Narrator/Host
This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast Smart move. Being financially savvy. Smart move. Another smart move having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts, and savings and eligibility vary by state.
- [01:04]
Dr. Wendy Hunter
Do you ever feel like you're just killing it raising your kids? Maybe you saw them do something nice for another kid and you were like, yeah, that's my kid. I'm Dr. Wendy Hunter, and I want to welcome you. This show will bring you deep dives into health issues that you've never even thought about. Like big issues, from whether sex ed belongs in school or not to smaller ones, like what to do for a bloody nose. I want to help you be the parent that people ask for advice and you can tell them you heard it from your friend, the pediatrician next door. Today I've got a great topic. It's how to raise kids who balance fitting in with staying true to themselves and true to their family's values, even when nobody's watching. We're going to figure this out. Let's start here. I want you to picture yourself at a playground. There's a group of kids gathered by the swings. They're laughing. They're deciding what game to play next. And a child comes up to the group. They clearly want in. And that's when you see it. The group kind of lowers their voices. Somebody whispers. And now another child, maybe your own child, stands a few steps away watching it all unfold. And they have a choice. Do you include the other kid or not? Do they join the group? Do they laugh along and pretend not to notice the kid's just been quietly shut out? Or does your child step away from the crowd and walk over to the child who's standing alone? Why do some kids instinctively fit into social situations while Other kids really struggle to read what's happening around them. Do we teach them social skills and how to read social cues? And here's an even bigger question for us as parents. How do kids stay grounded in what their family has taught them when Nobody's watching?
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I'm Dr. Wendy Hunter and I'm the pediatrician next door. I'm that doctor friend you call for practical advice about your kid's health. I mix the science of medicine with the reality of parenting.
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Okay, you know this parenting is not just about teaching kids what to do. It's about raising kids who can make the right choices on their own. Today we're going to figure out how kids learn to read social cues. Things like figuring out who is safe, who's open to play with them, and how our kids internalize family values to so those lessons guide their decisions wherever they go. And we will do this with the expert help of Dr. Erica Boknik. She's a family therapist, researcher, and mother of three kids. She spent more than 20 years studying child development, family dynamics, and how children learn social and emotional skills. She's also the host of the podcast Raising Souls where she brings science backed parenting insights into everyday family life. Does that sound familiar? Yeah. That's why I like her. We are two sides of the same coin. She's got the emotional stuff covered, and I know about, like, kidney physiology, but we both like science. So I want to figure out what makes the difference. How do kids learn how to read social cues and who to play with? And it turns out it starts at a far younger age than I ever could have guessed. Here's what Erica explained to me.
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Dr. Erica Bocknik
So this is often really surprising to people, but infants are learning to read other people's emotions and nonverbal cues and the patterns in their environments from the first moments of birth. And there's even some really interesting work where we are wondering if it even happens a little bit at the end of the fetal period as well. And the reason is that in order to survive in this world, babies are trying to understand social communication so they can be part of their crew, they can be part of their community. And so actually, this learning is happening in a very organic way from the very beginning.
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Dr. Wendy Hunter
This is not a crazy idea that humans start learning social interaction in the womb. You know, they can hear you. Otherwise. Why did your husband try to get you to play his favorite band to your belly when you were pregnant? Yeah, he's trying to influence music taste. I can totally buy that. An unborn baby can hear you talk. Then Hear someone else talk, they know there is reciprocal communication. They might even know the emotions that the pregnant mother is feeling when they talk. I mean, you share a blood supply. So I started to feel like I was making this up, so I actually looked it up. It's true. By the third trimester, fetuses can hear. They hear the whoosh of your blood, the rhythm of your heartbeat, and. And most importantly, they hear your voice. Not just the words, but the melody of how you speak. Your pitch, your rhythm, the rise and fall when you're calm, excited or stressed. Researchers have shown that in the first days of life, newborns prefer their mother's voice over all other voices. They've been listening to it for weeks. Some studies even show that babies prefer the sound patterns of their parents language rather than a foreign language. So even before they're born, babies know who their people are, how these people sound, and who is familiar and safe. Then in the first months, babies track your eyes and your mouth and they copy your facial expressions. That is early social cue learning. That is where it begins. There's even a famous experiment called the still face study where a parent suddenly stops responding. No smile, no talking, just a total blank face. And babies get very quickly upset. They wiggle, they coo louder, they try harder to get their parent to light back up. They already know something's wrong here. This isn't how our interaction is supposed to go. They know this. And this is the foundation for more complicated social stuff. Here's Dr. Bocknik.
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Dr. Erica Bocknik
All the way from birth, children are really attuned to the important people in their worlds and they're learning from them all the time. So mostly the way children are learning the answers to those big questions, who's safe, who's fun, who's interesting, who's like me, who's not like me? And really kind of I want to get to know. The way they're doing that is they're watching people around them and they're developing similar social hierarchies and priorities as the adults in their world. So they're learning at sort of the micro level within the relationships they're already in. We are role modeling for them. We are signaling to them things about safety and curiosity and wonder about others. Something that I think is happening right now, and why this is a big question on parents minds, is that there is all this erosion in big and small ways of that time spent between kids and the important people in their lives. We know that families are gathering around the dinner table, much less that adults are engaging in Less spontaneous play with their children. There's just less time, it seems, in families lives to just be together without a lot of, like, structure and purpose and intention. And so for that reason, it's very likely that children are losing out on some of the social learning they're supposed to be doing in their families and communities and neighborhoods and early relationships, so they can start to scaffold and build on that when they get to school and have to really do it a little bit more independently.
- [08:48]
Dr. Wendy Hunter
Kids learn to read social cues by being around people. That makes sense. They watch their siblings negotiate. They sit at the table while adults listen to each other talk. And when they chime into dinner conversations and notice whose turn it is to speak, they see when someone's joking, they see when someone's hurt. But families today are busy, as you know, so after school, schedules are getting stacked up, everyone's eating at different times. Screens fill the quiet moments that used to be our small opportunities for connecting. And fewer kids are experiencing those everyday hangout times where social skills are practiced. So when children arrive at school or activities, they are suddenly expected to read the room. They're supposed to notice voices and tones of voice, facial expressions, group dynamics and. And maybe they haven't had a lot of real time practice before then. And that can feel overwhelming. So this makes me wonder if these ordinary moments of connection are so important. What can parents do right now in real life to help kids build the social skills and to learn to read cues they need before they even enter the playground or the classroom?
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Dr. Erica Bocknik
Children need a lot of meaning and context when they learn things. It has to make sense to them. Why am I learning this? The way adults tend to learn is that we tend to believe people we see as authorities either on the subject matter or in our lives. And we learn through memorization and sort of just repeated exposure to material. And we expect kids to learn that way, too, that we can have one big conversation. And because we are the authority figures in their lives, they'll just remember it. And they can just repeat sort of affirmations or sentences or statements. But really what children are looking for is a why, right? Like, how do I interact with this person in a way that is fun and builds a friendship and makes sense? And other people in my life think it's important, and I'm thinking about the values and priorities in my life. So the answer to what parents can do, especially if you think your child is struggling, is engage with them in conversation, be with them on the playground, and role model some things, talk to the other child. The way that you might encourage your child to speak to them and do a little reflection too. Like, how did you feel when you were playing with that friend? And here's something I noticed. You can also do that in the everyday and low stakes moments about your own interactions. You can just say out loud to your kids, ooh, that conversation felt a little awkward to me. I don't know if you noticed I was sort of a little off or I don't know that person very well. So I was really working hard at trying to figure out how to make conversation. And children are learning in all these multilayered ways by what we do and how we behave, and also then how we give those interactions meaning.
- [11:56]
Dr. Wendy Hunter
One of the most powerful places this learning happens is somewhere totally ordinary. It's bedtime. Bedtime is when kids are open to reflecting on their interactions and you can ask some really deep questions. Then something really important starts to shift around age 5. That's when kids move from simply following rules because adults say they need to, to starting to have their own internal compass. So how does that transformation happen? How do children go from copying our values to absorbing them? So those values guide their choices when we're not there?
- [12:31]
Dr. Erica Bocknik
I would actually argue, and a lot of other developmental researchers make this argument as well, that that might be the age when they are able to sort of describe things in that abstract way as values. But again, they're actually learning about what they value from infancy, and that's guiding what they attune to and what they pay attention to. I always say to my graduate students, when I'm teaching a social emotional development course, does anybody know a baby whose first word was the? And of course, no one's ever met a baby whose first word was the, even though it's a really common word and they're hearing it on repeat, but it lacks any kind of meaning. It's not rooted in a value of any kind. Right. So they aren't attuning to it as much as they would be mama or dada. So I think they're learning values from day one. And so as parents, we have to really be walking the walk. It has to be very clear to our kids what do we value? And we can talk about it and say, this is what we value. But just as important is to actually value the thing and put our feet where our mouths are. And then as they get to the age where they're able to say out loud, I know we value this in our family, then we get to have those kind of meteor Conversations about the moments when values collide. And what do you do then?
- [13:56]
Dr. Wendy Hunter
That's the million dollar question. What do you do when values collide? Kids are making choices with real pressure around them. You remember third grade, right? Yeah, it's tough. Every child wants to belong. And for kids, belonging can mean being like somebody else, laughing when another kid laughs, talking how they talk and doing what they do. And most of the time it's harmless. But sometimes it pulls them straight into behaviors that don't match their values. So that's the tightrope that kids are walking. How do they fit in without losing themself? How do they stay connected to their friends and still act like the kind of person their family is raising them to be? That's the tension so many kids feel on the playground, in classrooms, and online. How can kids learn to hold both things at the same time?
- [14:49]
Dr. Erica Bocknik
I don't think there's an easy answer to this question. I want to say that up front that I think it's really startling for parents, and I count myself in this group because we take values based behavior so seriously in my family. And when our children try to negotiate different priorities and they stumble, it feels really bad. And we want there to be a way to correct that behavior. But I think what we really have to say is that this is part of lifelong learning. That you might really value a thing like being kind to everybody. But then there's this really fraught moment where being kind to a child that everybody else doesn't like and trying to include them may end up. The consequences may be that you become ostracized. And they see that we value kindness, but we also value connection and belongingness. And so there can be a clash in their mind, what do I do in this moment? And they have to make a choice. So what we can do if we become aware of it, and sometimes we won't be aware of it, but if we become aware of it, we can talk about it in those terms. This was actually a really hard choice for you. I get that. Is there anything you would have done differently? How do you think this ended up? Does this feel like you made the right choice for you? Why or why not? If we can see ourselves as partners with them in learning. Right. As opposed to being responsible for coaching their behavior. It opens up a world of things. And we want them to be able to independently reach into that sort of toolkit of values in big moments and make a good choice. They can't do that without the practice of having to again walk through a moment. Where there's conflict between values.
- [16:56]
Dr. Wendy Hunter
One of the hardest parts of parenting is realizing we can't just tell our kids what to do. We have to create space for curiosity, for questions, for making mistakes, and for figuring things out alongside us. That kind of parenting takes vulnerability and it's not easy. I'm going to take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to talk about how to support kids through this process without taking over the wheel. Have you ever wondered whether those colorful sports drinks actually hydrate you and are good for you? Here's the Most of them are loaded with sugar and artificial ingredients your body doesn't need. CURE is totally different. It's a plant based hydrating electrolyte drink mix with no added sugar, just a natural, delicious, convenient way to stay hydrated without the junk. CURE uses the same science backed ratio of electrolytes that's proven to hydrate as effectively as an IV drip. That's why I trust it and why I drink it. I use CURE when I'm traveling and on long days when I realize I haven't had enough water. I recommend it for parents, student athletes, and honestly, anyone who wants to feel better through the day. Staying hydrated isn't just about water. You also need electrolytes. That's why I love cure. It's clean, tastes great, and actually works. And here's a bonus Cure is FSA HSA approved so you can use your FSA or HSA funds to stay hydrated the smart way. For pediatrician next door listeners. You can get 20% off your first order at curehydration.com Dr. Wendy that's-R W E N D Y with code DrWendy. And if you get a post purchase survey, make sure to let them know you heard about CURE right here. It helps support the show. Don't just drink more water, upgrade it with cure.
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Dr. Erica Bocknik
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- [19:46]
Dr. Wendy Hunter
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Dr. Wendy Hunter
Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates excludes Massachusetts. Before the break, we were talking about how parenting can mean stepping back, letting kids try things out and learn from real life situations instead of just following our instructions, our dictation. But that brings up an important question. If we're not supposed to micromanage every social decision, what are parents getting wrong when they teach their kids values? Where are parents unintentionally making things harder for their kids instead of Easier? Here's what Dr. Boknik explained from her experience.
- [20:30]
Dr. Erica Bocknik
When I ask parents in my clinical office, tell me what your family values, every single family, their number one value is kindness. But then when we really dissect, what does that mean to you? It actually means a range of things. It's a word that is almost too broad for us to really understand how to teach it to our kids and role model it and again, be really predictable about what that means to us. And. And one mistake I see people making is that they haven't done that work to really figure out what does this mean to me because again, there's going to be conflict between values. The other mistake I see parents making is that they're not really transparent with themselves about what they actually value. And in this example about sort of navigating complex social relationships, parents tend to have a really hard time just being honest that there's a big part of many people who really value popularity and being socially centered. And a lot of us don't want to say this out loud. What we want to say is we're raising all of our kids to be kind and include people and just be like pure lovely humans. But if we don't acknowledge the very real pull tension that can exist, how can we ever shepherd our kids through complicated social terrain? And I'll add to that that I also think what a lot of adults in the world, parents and not don't understand about kids, is that they listen to what we say the least and they listen. There's multiple levels of communication happening all the time. There's affect and tone and the pattern of our behavior again, the direction our feet walk in. And I think children tend to know what you say is the most easily manipulated, right? So they're paying attention to what we communicate and whether or not we want it to be true that what we actually in our hearts, value is something that we're a little ambivalent about. The kids can see it. They know what matters to us. And especially at very young ages, they are amoral. They're willing to buy into whatever the values in the group are in order to belong. So, like, we have to be very clear about what we really care about.
- [23:06]
Dr. Wendy Hunter
If it's the little moments, the ones they watch us live out every day, that matter. I mean, what about these scenarios? You get to your car from the grocery store and you realize the cashier forgot to ring up a case of soda that's on the bottom of your cart. Do you go all the way back to pay for it or let it slide? What if you have a crying infant with a poopy diaper and a toddler who's losing it and your 7 year old is there too? Do moments like that matter? If it's really the everyday choices that matter most, what small, meaningful actions can parents take to help kids absorb values and build their social confidence?
- [23:42]
Dr. Erica Bocknik
We're not saying to be hyper vigilant about every behavioral choice all the time. What children are learning from is the pattern of our choices and, and understanding what we value through them. Really the point is to get clear about that and do your best to be making on the whole, behavioral choices that match your values. And then when you don't, I mean, it's so funny. Your example, I literally stole a jar of pickles from Target a couple of years ago and I stood in the parking lot with my young kid who needed a diaper change and I was like overwhelmed. And I did the whole thing about like, who is this really hurting and should I go back in, Should I not go back in? And the truth is, I actually don't even remember what I ended up deciding. But the wrestling with it is just as valuable to children. What I try to reinforce to parents is that it's never one big conversation. That's never gonna be the thing. If something matters to you, there should be lots of small convos on repeat. And it's best when that's organic. When you're just spending time together and there's something that comes up and you can kind of comment on it and ask their opinion. And kind of talk about it. And I think that's a especially true for things about navigating friendships and social cues. Nobody, and especially children, learn well from a place of shame. We don't do our best teaching, actually, or our best learning in reaction to, like, ooh, that play date went really badly. Right. We can address it. But also it's even more valuable to talk in a more proactive way about, like, what do you love about play dates? What's easy? What makes it smoother? How can I help? What's something that you notice tends to go badly, and we can just prepare for it Again, we're just learning here. There's no perfect. I think people can do that. I also really love in general for learning, and I think this especially is true for how we can teach values. I really love rituals and mantras. When my husband drives the kids to school, he says to them, be yourself, work hard. Don't be a punk, Be a bachnik. And it makes us laugh. But it means something to the kids. They understand what we mean when we say it, and we say it every day. And I think those small kind of affirmations reinforcements. A little family mantra also goes a long way to becoming the voice inside children's heads when they're not with us.
- [26:19]
Dr. Wendy Hunter
Yeah. What about when they aren't with us? As kids grow, we aren't the only ones shaping who they are. And obviously sometimes kids are going to open up to adults in a way that they don't open up to their parents. So who are the safe people kids can turn to outside of their parents? And how can we build that kind of village around them?
- [26:38]
Dr. Erica Bocknik
When I ask older kids about who the parents in their circle, who are the people that they feel like, this is who I could go to. This is everyone's person. It almost always comes down to this is who drives us places. This is who's always available to pick us up. It's so interesting how specific it is, and it's striking to me because I think as parents, we especially those of us who are just a really, like, just trying so hard to get it right, we overanalyze it in some ways. Right about what the thing is and how we say it and the whatever. And from a kid's perspective, it truly is like, who's there, who is regularly there.
- [27:22]
Dr. Wendy Hunter
I knew it. This is totally why I was always willing to drive my girl scout troop around. I wanted to be the one they thought of. And it's not about me. What can we do to really help kids develop values and practice them when they aren't with us.
- [27:36]
Dr. Erica Bocknik
I really try to reflect on what do we know for sure about what helps kids to thrive and be healthy. And really the thing that we know absolutely without question is that close loving relationships between parents and children all the way through age 16 at least, are the most important forces in a child's life. For whether or not they are well, whether or not they have good mental health and good self esteem and that they are creative and imaginative and thriving in this world, that is the number one thing. And even when it starts to shift in later adolescence where peer relationships start to take up more space. But it isn't until really mid to late adolescence. But even then, what teens are doing is replicating and practicing the patterns from their parent child relationships. So the number one thing that I lean into when I'm lost especially is to say how can I make sure that my child not only feels loved in this relationship, which we do in a lot of ways as parents. Caregiving, washing clothes, checking in. Right. There's a lot of ways that we love and nurture. But I ask myself every day, how can I make sure my children feel liked in this relationship? It sounds trite, but I get to know their music, I show up at their activities, I ask about them. When they say things that are maybe funny or weird or awkward, I laugh with them, I let them know I get it. And it's those things that I think really give children the anchor they need. Because I accept that the social world of kids and adults, by the way, is complicated. And I try to really give them the message that no matter what, we've got each other and whatever happens out there. Other kids also are insecure and they're struggling and they don't know the answer. And they're going to do stupid things and you're going to do stupid things and that's just going to all be part of it. And I don't have to even pretend to myself that what I can do is X out that kind of stress from ever touching you. But I can make sure that you leave this house every day. And you know what we are to, you know what to expect here. You know what this relationship is and you can carry that throughout your day. There's this great term a researcher named Barbara Feast coined called emotional residue. And it's that way that the interactions we have with our children kind of coat their soul. And research shows that it buffers stress. That's how rituals, that's how family rituals like bedtime reading together dinner time. That's how that buffers the impacts of trauma and stress is that they are sort of coated with that good, positive sense of themselves and it helps them weather the world they're walking into.
- [30:57]
Dr. Wendy Hunter
My biggest takeaway is this. Your connection with your child becomes the blueprint that they use. Even the relationships they build as teenagers are shaped by what they practiced with you. So laugh with them. Be curious about their world, let them know you're in their corner. Tell them when you respect something they did, and tell them when you're proud. We aren't here to steer every move. I wish we were. No, we're like the bumper pads in the bowling alley of their life, keeping them safe while they learn to roll the ball by themselves. Thank you again to Dr. Erica Bocknik and be sure to listen to her podcast. It's called Raising a Convo Podcast for more of her powerful conversations. The link is in the show notes and as always, if you were inspired by this episode, please, please, please share it with a friend. Just send it.
- [31:52]
For more from the Pediatrician Next Door Find me on the web@ pediatriciannextdoorpodcast.com if you've got a question about the weird things kids do, send an email to hellopediatrician nextdoorpodc for a chance to hear your voice on the show. I'm Dr. Wendy Hunter and I'm the Pediatrician Next Door. This show is produced by Red Rock Music. Make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever it is you're listening. I'll be back next time with more.
- [32:26]
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