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Hello and welcome to the Questions and Answers edition of Thriving Kids, a podcast from the Child Mind Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to transforming the lives of children with mental health and learning disorders. I'm Dr. Dave Anderson, clinical psychologist and your host. Last week we welcomed back Dr. Lisa Damore for a conversation about how to future proof your kids for an uncertain world. Dr. Damore talked about the simple but powerful foundations that help protect kids mental health over time and including sleep safety, family connection, emotional flexibility, and having interests that belong to the child rather than to a resume or an achievement checklist. That conversation sparked a number of questions from our community about how much sleep kids really need, when parents should hold firm on safety how to build resilience without over scheduling how to help kids develop the confidence, coping skills and sense of self they'll need for whatever comes next. Let's get into it. Our first question on our Thriving Kids Podcast Q and A episode this week As a busy parent, can you remind me what are the basic things I should focus on if I want to protect my child's mental health for the long run? It's a great question because if any of you are busy parents and I hope you'll listen to the entirety of the podcast this week. But if you just want to listen to the answer to this question, here's the answer to that the biggest drivers of kids mental health are a parent or any single caregiver that they have a close relationship with who they know is emotionally available who they can go to if they have a particular struggle or problem that is really emotionally vexing or concerning to them basic needs whether or not they have shelter, food, clothing, whether or not someone is paying attention to their basic wellness habits making sure that they are getting a balanced diet, making sure they're moving their bodies, making sure they're getting enough sleep and then lastly, what we're trying to promote is engagement with those things that are really developmentally important. That a kid is engaged or invested in school that a kid is engaged or invested in cultivating at least one activity or hobby outside of school that a kid is spending face to face time with peers and face to face time with family members. If we can think about just that general checklist, we are going to watch, you know, kids mental health be fairly well supported at some level because we're giving them lots and lots of opportunities to cultivate their most important developmental tasks around people who really can support them. Okay, our second question for this podcast episode how do I know whether my child's mood, focus or behavior is a mental health concern or whether they're simply not getting enough sleep. And this is a good one because we've gotten how do I know when to be concerned about my kids mood, focus or behavior before in Q and A episodes. But we haven't gotten it as it's juxtaposed with sleep, which this is a direct result of how much we talked about sleep during Lisa Damore's podcast episode last week. So moving beyond kind of what? Well, actually probably starting where Dr. Damore was talking about. One of the first things that we assess in any first session with a patient family is how much sleep a kid is getting. The reason being that if a kid isn't getting enough sleep in, it can really affect their attention, their behavior, their mood, their anxiety, any number of things we could otherwise be interpreting as a mental health struggle. So we want to check on that first. Now, we also don't want to shame parents. The tough part about talking about sleep is that for many parents, they want their kids to get more sleep, but for any number of reasons, they're finding that to be difficult. Maybe it's that there's just too much to do in the evenings and so it's difficult to settle down. Maybe their kid has real difficulty getting to sleep. Maybe, unfortunately, there's no way to decrease a certain amount of sound or something like that at night. Or maybe they've got a sibling who tends to be restless and sleeps in the same room as them, or they sleep in the same room with other family members and that tends to be a little bit loud and it's difficult to get sleep. There's all kinds of reasons. What we keep going back to and we also did a podcast actually early in the thriving kids podcast series on sleep with our friend Dr. Shelby. When we talk about sleep, we all we're trying to get to is getting a kid a kind of reliable ritual for sleep hygiene could involve dimming lights. Certain things they do to power down, certain ways we get them prepared for sleep each night. In the same way we have articles about sleep hygiene on our website in our family resource center@childmind.org that parents can consult. We're trying to get kids a certain number of hours and to have those hours be regular. We're trying to work on their sleep space, make it cool, dark and comfortable so that they can perhaps get the best sleep they can get. And then we want to do things where oftentimes we're supporting parents behaviorally on some of the issues that come up around sleep. Kids who have trouble falling Asleep, wake a bunch of times during the night, have fears at night or anxiety or nightmares, wake very early. You know, things like that that we really try to help parents through, figuring out how they can help their kids to be either brave at night or perhaps give their bodies a little bit more time to rest and any number of things like that. And again, there are articles on our website about that and references in previous podcast episodes about it. Once we know that a kid is getting pretty good sleep, that's when we pivot to other concerns, where I'll say to a parent on the level of mood, has your child's mood changed significantly, you know, in the last few weeks or months? Do they suddenly seem a lot more angry or a lot more sad or a lot more fearful? Do we notice they have much more difficulty either focusing or engaging with activities or things that they once engaged with easily or enjoyed, whether that is in school or in school subjects, or with extracurricular activities? Or to this point, has their behavior changed in such a way that they're acting differently toward people who formerly they would have been acting much more nicely toward? Or do we notice that they're getting a lot more negative toward themselves, talking about themselves in kind of a negative way? Those are some of the main signs we talk to parents about after we've kind of assessed whether or not sleep could be affecting any of those things. Our next question on this thriving kids podcast, Q and A. What can parents do when they know sleep matters, but their child pushes back hard against bedtime? This is exactly following what I was talking about, about how we provide behavioral support to parents about sleep. Some kids really love to sleep. My wife and my daughter really loves to sleep. If we say it's bedtime, it could be 30 minutes before her bedtime, it could be 45 minutes before her bedtime. She's very likely to be like, alright, yeah, we could lie down, we could maybe go to sleep. Our son, on the other hand, fights sleep as if it is the enemy. So if we say it is time to go to sleep even five minutes earlier than normal bedtime, that is kind of like, no, I'm not gonna be tired, I can't possibly go to sleep, and I'm worried I won't be able to fall asleep. Or he remembers a lot of different things that could be happening around bedtime that he wants to do, and suddenly bedtime is now 15, 25, 30 minutes later than we would like. When kids push hard against bedtime, we gotta think about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. Some Kids really are intrinsically motivated to go to sleep. We're all a mix of things that we are intrinsically motivated to do and things which we need extrinsic motivation to do. I tell people, if I won the lottery, I would still work for the Child Mind Institute doing a lot of the same work, but there'd be certain aspects of it, like the paperwork, that I would just suddenly eliminate from my plate. Because the only reason I do it is extrinsic motivation. People pay me to do it. Same thing for certain kids. What I try to think about is, how do we take what that child is extrinsically motivated by? And we say, look, we're gonna link this to your willingness to engage in your sleep hygiene routine, to power down and to calm down at nighttime, to focus on how we actually get in bed on time and give our bodies the rest that it needs. And we really work on those things where we're trying at first to say, we're gonna link certain activities that you like doing, or certain choices you like making for the family, or certain things you're asking to earn, things like that. We'll set up those systems with parents and we'll say, and we're gonna link this to shaping your behavior in certain ways around bedtime, getting closer and closer to where we wanna be around this. And I always say to parents, there's no magical, like, reward that you offer that suddenly makes it so a kid goes from never doing a behavior to suddenly doing it every single day. It's all a process of shaping. You start off with a kid who's really pushing back hard. You try to link their incremental progress to certain incentives that you might be able to set up. And then over time, what you notice is that as things become habits, you don't need those extrinsic reinforcers as much the kid becomes. There's a certain intrinsic reinforcement that comes with mastery or knowing what you're doing. And you don't feel like we get this from parents all the time. You're bribing your kid forever. You're just utilizing the incentives at your disposal as a parent to help a kid face a challenge. Try to kind of evolve on that challenge. And then you're rotating or pivoting your incentives to other behaviors that are kind of their growing edges as we get over time. Now, I will also say again, on childmind.org we have articles about how to help kids manage some behavioral resistance or pushing back hard at bedtime. So if you want more information, there, we'll have links in our show Notes. Our fourth question for this podcast, Q and A why do family meals matter if no one is having a deep conversation and my kid barely talks to the table? This is a great reference to something that Dr. Damore and I were talking about last week. So when Dr. Lisa and I were talking about this, we were talking about how there's the importance of parental monitoring and the importance of face to face family time spent together. What we know for many families is that that face to face time sometimes isn't pleasant for everybody. Sometimes it involves arguments or conflict. Sometimes it involves people, you know, picking fights with people. That's something where we understand that we want to help families around that we'd love to help families to kind of decrease conflict over time. But this all goes back to monitoring. It's that as kids move into the teenage years and I'll use the question that my wife actually phrased recently around this we want parents think about the following question. If you were to ask your kid, do you think your parent knows where you are and what you're doing most of the time? And really where you are most of the time? And it's about kids impression of that, that kids who think their parents care about where they are, who they're with, what they're doing most of the time they know someone's out there, cares about them, they care about when they come home. They care about them being safe. They care about them making safe decisions. Similarly, family dinners serve a function where it says, I care about where you are. I care that we are together on certain nights, even if that doesn't involve great deep conversation or amazing interactions. I care that you're here. And what you want to also punctuate those family meals with is from time to time saying to your kid, hey, look, I know sometimes we eat dinner in silence. Or I'll give you the example of just last night my wife and I were eating dinner with our daughter and you know, she just started reading a book at the table while we were talking and we thought, okay, I guess she doesn't feel like she needs to talk to us at dinner. You know, we'll allow this to go because after all, it's reading a book. She's not asking to like watch a show or something. And so we kind of let that happen. But she knows we're sitting there with her and from time to time she hears us say, hey honey, if ever at dinner you want to talk to us about something you're having a problem with, one of your Friends, you're really concerned about something we want you to know we're here. You keep emphasizing that as an open line of communication to your kid. And what family dinners also say is, I care where you are, I carry you with me from time to time, and I care where you are outside this house. Those are the messages you're trying to convey. It's not so much the deep conversation, even though I will say we have lots of other podcast content in other episodes about how to get teens talking to the table or how to get everybody kind of engaged and, you know, build kind of relational rituals over time that maybe get you a little bit more information than little bits and pieces your kid is giving you. All right, our fifth question on this podcast, Q and A. How do I decide which parenting rules should be non negotiable like helmet, seat belt, sleep or substance use and which ones I can relax about? So this is an interesting question because the parent who asked this, most of the things that we're talking about, it actually went in kind of a spectrum as, as a parent asks about this. So I'll start with helmets and seat belts. Helmets and seat belts are easy because, you know, when your child is on a moving vehicle of any kind, whether it be a scooter, a bicycle, rollerblades, riding in a car or anything like that, the issue is, you know, you may not think that it's as high a risk, but when we talk about kid accidents, so many accidents happen and so many kids are injured if they don't use those two things. Those are basic safety things. Protect your brain, protect your body with the things available to you. Those tend to be non negotiable for most parents. Just like looking both ways you go across the street. Because part of it is that parents intrinsically understand that these are threats to their kids overall safety and even life in most cases. So that becomes something that's absolutely non negotiable when you get towards sleep. You know, as referenced by a couple questions already in this podcast Q and A episode, sleep is one of those things that is a negotiation, even if you feel it's a non negotiable. So I want to put that in parents minds because you're going to need to use certain techniques to help your kid to understand and then also meet you where you're at on the importance of sleep hygiene and their sleeping space and the amount of sleep that they get. Even though a kid may be able during daylight hours to acknowledge that you're right about this. I mean, who are we kidding not too many kids are gonna acknowledge you're right and just be like, oh my God, mom or dad, like, thank you so much. You are so right about sleep and I'm so glad you're interested in my brain and my health. That's not gonna be it. It's more that they might be able to implicitly acknowledge that during the daylight hours, when at night they're gonna tell you they got all kinds of other stuff to do and you don't need to be this draconian and, you know, work on this. So sleep's still gonna be a negotiation, even though, you know, it's non negotiable for their health. And then with substance abuse, I think this is something that we've talked about in a few other podcast episodes. You may want to set up a non negotiable. Lots of parents do. They want to set up non negotiables about things like sex and romantic relationships, about substance and alcohol abuse, about tech use, where they say, look, this is a boundary. I'm drawing this line in the sand and it can't go any further. And we say to parents is, look, there's three talking points around this. You might say to your kid, I want you to delay certain risky activities as long as possible in line with either our family values, my worries for your safety, or our family, and cultural or religious background, whatever it might be. The second talking point is I also want to be a realist. You're going to be exposed to some of these things. As much as I don't want you to do these things, as much as I want to draw that line and say, hey, I don't want you to use substances, I don't want you to use alcohol. It's very likely you'll be around these things. And then beyond that, we, we want parents to say, I do not want you to do these things, I want you to delay. I'm realistic that you're going to be around them. And if for some reason you get yourself into trouble, please call me. Please call me. Now, the last part of this question, which is, which ones can I relax about? The reality is, I don't know, relaxation to necessarily be a state of being that many parents say that they find many moments of. That is why we've done so much work here on the Thriving Kids Podcast in helping parents to think about how to give themselves even a little bit of license to engage in self care and to fill their cup. If we're talking about things to relax about, the reality is almost everything is Something where you're trying to facilitate a certain level of critical thinking, a certain level of moderation for your child in the midst of a relationship you're trying to build with them. Everything tends to be a road to navigate. I'm sorry if I can't relax people on those things, but I'm racking my brain. I'm like, what is one topic that I, as a parent, relax about? I don't got one, guys. You know, I think that pretty much everything about raising children is, you know, conscious reflection on how you are hopefully teaching these little beings what you know and what you've learned in your life experience against their will as they become their own little people. Even if they respect you and love you, they're sitting there still wanting to be like, look, let me arrive at my own conclusions. You can provide input and advice, but only when I ask for it and only when I feel like I need it, because I really feel like I can do this myself. So for those of you trying to relax, we're with you in this space. Please care for yourselves. But also know that one of the reasons why we have so much content still to go on Thriving Kids is the podcast is because there's so many topics that we as parents wrestle with, and for good reason. The parenting is in the wrestling, in the struggle with all these kind of things, and still trying to find space for ourselves and our loved ones. Okay, our sixth question on this podcast, Q and A. How can parents encourage hobbies without turning them into another achievement, resume builder, or pressure point? This is a fantastic question because this allows us to talk about two things. The first is the process of encouraging hobbies. It's that when you're encouraging hobbies or extracurricular activities, it's saying to your kid, the value here is exposure. I want you to be exposed to all kinds of things. I want you to try things. I want you to take childhood to really try out new things. Try an instrument, try to sing, try every sport you know, try every art activity, all these different things. Because I want you to explore the world, and I want you to realize there's so much to explore in the world. To think about what your passions are might be that exploration is exciting. That also leads into growth mindset, this notion that as we're building resilience, grit, and growth mindset, we frame things as learning experiences. And we say, as you move into these hobbies or these extracurriculars, your job is to learn. Your job is to try things out. Your job is the process. It is in the trying that we learn and that we get value out of these activities. That is what I want you to be able to do. So that takes us away from this notion that we're doing activities as an achievement. You have to be first place or a resume builder or a particular point of pressure. We have to succeed in a certain way. It's that when your kids do succeed in those activities, it's of course fine to, you know, reinforce that, to tell them how proud you are of them, but always to pivot back to the idea that what we want them to do is be exposed to the world, to try their best, to invest in the things that they're doing, to, to cultivate their passions, to see things as learning experiences, and to realize that the best thing they're developing is their own perseverance in trying out these things. Those are the values that take us away from this kind of pressure focused culture. Question number seven, our second to last one on this podcast episode. What should I do if my child's hobby seems pointless to me, but clearly gives them pride, calm or confidence? The answer is suppress thy reaction. Because, look, you might think that it's pointless, but so much of life, so much what we just referenced in the last question of growth, mindset of grit of a kid developing this kind of learning hunger and kind of like excitement about learning is us letting them follow their hobbies and passions and develop all those skills. It's not so much about the thing they're doing, it's so much more about the process of developing skills around that thing that they can then apply to all kinds of other things in their life, from their academics, to their work in the future, to the toughness of relationships and how they're working through things. So at the end of the day, you're doing it right as a parent. Your kid has pride in themselves, your kid has confidence in themselves. It's giving them some great feeling of achievement. Bottom line is, if that's what they like, try to stay one step behind them and be their cheerleader, not the one who says, look, you need to do something else. I don't really see this as interesting. Now, granted, you can still push them toward exposure to other things that you find have more of a point to them. But the object is always to kind of find that middle path of not, you know, invalidating the things they are interested in while you're still also trying to expose them to things you think will have perhaps more value or, you know, will map more onto what they can do, you know, Kind of in their, their life going forward. But bottom line is, support them. Please just tell them that you're proud of them for how much they're succeeding themselves. Our last question for this Thriving Kids podcast, Q and A. How can parents help kids develop a growth mindset when schoolwork is hard and everyone is frustrated? That's another great question on drilling down on kind of growth mindset. And this is the work of Carol Dweck. It's been continued by other disciples of Dweck, like David Yeager out in Texas, where you can kind of, you know, get into some of this work. We're really. When we see kids who are frustrated, who are frustrated with how hard schoolwork is. Growth mindset is not only developed on schoolwork, but the basics of it are that as we're engaging with any challenging task, what we're telling ourselves is, I can give this task my effort. I can try hard at this task and develop skills in this task. Skill is not static. It's not something I have or I don't. It can be developed. It's something that I can work at over time. And I do have the resilience and the grit to kind of build this skill. And. And it's so much about how a kid talks to themselves. And a lot of that self talk comes from what a parent says in those moments. Honey, I know that this is something that we're going to learn together. I want to be able to sit down. Just like, let's take a certain amount of time to sit down. We'll break this task down in different parts because I'm just proud of us for making a good effort, for putting effort into this, seeing what we can do. And I understand we're frustrated. We can validate that emotion. This could be frustrating. It could be hard to learn. But I'm going to sit with you through these feelings. We're going to keep trying and we're going to realize we can develop these skills. You don't have to be good at math right off the bat or good at this math skill. We can develop this over time. And it's that belief in yourself that you can grow these skills instead of these skills being fixed, which is kind of the other side of this. And for those of you who really want more Growth Mindset resources, we'll include some suggestions in our show notes with that. I want to thank you so much for joining us for this Q and A edition of Thriving Kids. And we've included, as I said, links, resources and references, as well as links to some of the Family Resource center childmind.org articles I mentioned in our show notes. If you want to keep learning about any of today's topics. As always, thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.