Live from Home Visiting Conference: How Brains Work

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Parenting Brief. I’m your host, Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez. This week the Parenting Brief is at the 14th Annual Strong Families AZ Home Visiting Conference where the people who help families gather to learn and grow their skills. This morning, I spoke with Dr. Heather Berlin. She’s a neuroscientist and an expert on how our perceptions impact us.

Here’s part of our conversation.

One of the things 

that home visitors talk to parents about is appropriate child development so that they can understand whether or not what their child is doing is in alignment with appropriate child development or whether or not there is a delay or that maybe we can work on something such as impulse control.

What is that child development, what is appropriate in child development up to the age of five in regards [00:01:00] to that impulse control so that they know, well, my 2-year-old behaves like this, this is appropriate, versus I told you how to wait and now you’re not waiting. Like how, what is appropriate? 

Dr. Heather Berlin: It’s really hard at that age to make those kinds of distinctions because these kids are mostly, like, the prefrontal cortex is just not, not, not really that, that much there.

So, you know, they’re all gonna have trouble with impulse control and it’s, it’s hard to say what’s appropriate and not at that early of an age. Um, but the. There are personality differences too, right? So some kids, it’s like they’re gonna be slightly more impulsive no matter what. It’s not that you can change their personality, but you can create an environment that can help, um, them at least, you know, be not destructive or whatnot.

So if you have a kid who. No matter how many times you told them, like they’re always putting weird stuff in their mouth or [00:02:00] whatever, you know, you’re gonna have to create an environment, structure your environment. Like you have once year old who knows, like don’t go into the, I don’t know, cleaning cabinet and eat the Tide pods or whatever, you know, like they would just not do that.

And then you have another kid who’s like gonna put everything in his mouth. So like when you know what the kid is, they have a more, their tendency is you have to create an environment that’s gonna protect them. Um, and maybe give them a little bit more attention in that phase. But there’s, it’s always like with, with psychiatry or psychology, there’s not very line like, oh wait, now we know this is a disorder and this, it’s really a gradation.

And it’s like, how much is this problem interfering with their lives and other people’s lives? And how much do we wanna intervene based on that? So it’s always, you know, it’s, it’s very, there’s no, I can’t give you like a hard and fast, okay, this, this would mean it’s a problem and this isn’t. But you know, I think as parents and as, as as healthcare workers, you have to realize that when, when they’re starting to hurt themselves or other people that, that you have to think about interventions at that point.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Is it [00:03:00] true that we shouldn’t Google questions right away in our world in which we are very fast? Even when my children, I’m an 8-year-old and a 14-year-old, and my 8-year-old. I love her, and she’ll ask me a question and I don’t know the answer. And her first thing is, well, can you look it up? And I’m like, mm-hmm.

In the encyclopedia, 

Dr. Heather Berlin: Right? 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: What, so is it a good idea to Google things right away, or do our brains really need to wonder more and be able to work through problems? And how do we encourage that or do that or maintain our own self-control of being like, I’m. Let’s think this through for a minute. 

Dr. Heather Berlin: Yeah. I mean, look, we are trying, okay, we’re kind of these like we’re cavemen brain in a modern world.

Okay? So we’re running on these older programs and we’re butting up against this technology and it’s shifting our brains and how we think and how our brains develop, especially in children, developing children. [00:04:00] So, you know, what we’re finding is that, yeah, it’s kind of making us. I’m not less intelligent, less, less, um, creative, less being able to solve problems.

’cause we keep outsourcing it and we’re not using our brain in that way. And we really gotta, first of all, especially for children, let them be bored. Let them be bored. Let them wa wonder. Let them stare out the window in the car. I, my kids, I have a 11 and 8-year-old, I they on bored. Can I have my iPad? No.

Look out the window. And eventually your creative, your brain starts to create things. And we find that if you put people in a sensory deprivation room, they start hallucinating because our brain will create. Um, so you need to get through the sort of. Tr, like this sort of pitfall of boredom to get to the wonderful creative states.

Don’t look for quick cancer. 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: How long does that last? 

Dr. Heather Berlin: It doesn’t last that long. It takes a couple, maybe 10 minutes, and they’re in and they’re like, suddenly my kids will start playing games with each other and creating characters in the back. Right? But they have to get through that little period of uncomfortableness to get there.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Parents [00:05:00] also have to be willing to sit in that uncomfortable space because I know myself as a parent and many parents have a tendency. To just be like, let me, let me just fix this so that it can stop. Mm-hmm. Um, because I think even parents have a hard time of, of identifying like, what can our kids do when they are bored?

As if, again, there still needs to be a different activity as opposed to just sitting there. Right. How can we support parents in sitting in that uncomfortable space? Mm-hmm. So that they can help their children get to that space of creativity. 

Dr. Heather Berlin: Yeah. I think a lot of it is us, we’re all humans, right? Is working on our own tolerance for frustration and, um, you know, emotional regulation basically.

Now it becomes harder as apparently you work all day, you’re tired, you come home, your kids are like annoying, I’m bored, I’m bored, and you just wanna like, kind of like, here, take this and you know, it’s really for yourself. So that’s [00:06:00] a lot to be able to overcome your own. Uh, wanting, you know, emotional regulation, wanting peace, whatever it may be, to be able to tolerate, have a little bit of tolerance for this kind of, to get frustrated.

And that’s something we can all work on, you know, as individuals. But I, I, when I’ve, if I’m in that state and I’m frazzled and whatever, I, I think back to like when they were really young, when you’re doing sleep training and as parents, if you remember this, and like the kids crying, they want you to come in the room.

And you kind of, sometimes you have to let them cry it out so they learn how to self-soothe. And that can be really difficult as a parent. But the worst thing you can do is like let them cry for like 10, 15 minutes and then go in and soothe them. Because then they learn, oh, if I just keep crying, crying, cry, eventually they’ll come in, right?

You see, you can’t give into your own, you know, wanting to, that’s the worst thing you can do. And there’s an extinction effect. When you stop coming in their room, they’re gonna cry louder and louder, see if they get a response, and then if they don’t, eventually it starts to extinct. You get this what’s called an extinction [00:07:00] burst, where it gets worse before it gets better, and you as a parent have to tolerate the worst before it gets better.

So if you want your kids to. Get more comfortable just being bored on their own or looking out the window. You’re gonna have to try to at least get through that ex extinction burst and tolerate them complaining about it a lot until suddenly they realize, like, now my kids, I’m just like, no, you’re not getting an iPad.

Figure it out yourselves. And they realize that I’m not gonna give in and then they just stop annoying me. Right. But at first you gotta get through that. So remind yourself of that. It’s just the extinction burst. It’ll get better and eventually it does. They learn. They learn how to self-soothe. They learn how to become, you know, more creative internally, but it takes, it takes some time. 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: As a parent, we try really hard to influence our children and to have them see and experience the world how we want them to view and experience the world and protect them from social media, from whatever, um, from the messages in marketing, whatever the case may be.

How [00:08:00] can parents override the things that they don’t have control over. In order to still have that positive impact on their children and help their children experience things so that when they are perceiving the world, it is not just influenced by all of the things we have no control over. 

Dr. Heather Berlin: Yep. Well, it’s really interesting.

It’s very hard for parents. It’s, it’s hard for me is. When you look at the research, um, like Steve, Steven Pinker, I’ve got a friend and colleague who’s written many good books. He’s a psychologist based at Harvard, and he, um, like wrote a book, the Blank Slate. Um, but basically looking, when you look at all the research and do twin studies and things of that, you know, twins who, same genetics, but like raised in different environments.

All of this shows that actually as much as we feel otherwise, parents don’t have that much influence on kids outside of the extremes, like when there’s extreme neglect or abuse or whatever, that has an impact. Um, but outside of those extremes, like when you’re just in normal [00:09:00] kind of parenting. Our influence isn’t that we don’t have that much influence.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: That’s devastating to hear. 

Dr. Heather Berlin: I know, but it’s good and it’s bad because when they’re all messed up and they say it’s your fault, like no, it’s not actually your fault. And if they do great, you can’t take all the credit. But you know, so there’s pluses and minuses. So you have like some influence, but the amount of influence we think we have.

Is is much less than then. That’s at least what the research bears out. And so that’s what science is like. We have our biases and what we think, and then there’s like the data and what it shows and what, what they found is that actually the, the people of the most influence are their friends or their peers.

And what you can do as a parent, I mean, obviously you give them your words of wisdom and advice, but they’re still who they are as individuals. I mean, your goal is like to help encourage them to be who they’re meant to be and keep them sort of on the right track and not, you know, hurt themselves or whatever.

But like as far as. What else you can do as a parent? Get them around. Get them in environments where they’re gonna have good friends that are gonna be good influences. Get them in environments. They’ll listen to the [00:10:00] parents, the parents of their friends more than you because they, they, they, for whatever reasons.

I’m not gonna get into the psychology of it all, but. Try to get them around the right kind of friends, put them in those environments to parents that of friends that you like, that you think are good influences. ’cause kids will listen to them. And I see it with my own kids. Like I’ll tell them one thing, like, you know, whatever, don’t eat.

Like you need to eat more salad. You’ll grow more. And they won’t listen to me. But then the other friends parents, they’ll go out and be like, oh yeah, your daughter ordered a salad for lunch. I’m like, what? They, you know, like, they’re like, yeah, we told them salad is good for you. So like that’s something you can do is try to get your kids in the right kinds of environments.

Give them all the wisdom, but like the idea that we can mold them into like what we want them to be is, is that’s not the best strategy. ’cause they will resist if they come home with like a boyfriend or girlfriend you don’t like, don’t be like, you can’t ever see them again. They’ll just want to see them more.

Right? Like, oh yeah, he’s great. Like maybe you guys should get married. Whatever. You know, they’ll the opposite. My [00:11:00] daughter came home, I’m gonna tell you this tiny story. She came home with a fake like nose ring. It’s like a fake one. And, and like, she’s like, and I wanna get a belly ring and blah, blah, blah.

And, and she thought it was gonna upset me and I was like, I mean, I was like, in the nineties, whatever, I had a belly ring. I’m like, look at the scar that I have now. I’m like, yeah, sure you can get it, but look what’s gonna happen when you’re older. I’m like, but that’s great. Go for it. You know, instead of being mad, I being like, you absolutely can never do that, which she expected and she wanted that reaction and then it lost its steam.

You know, then she was like, oh, this is no longer fun for me. Right. But if they wanna rebel. So, you know, there’s these techniques of knowing how to work with your kids and don’t always think you can mold them and say, you’re absolutely not. You can’t get a tattoo. Whatever it is, be like, yeah, sure, get lots of tattoos.

Check out this 80-year-old with all their tattoos, then you’ll look like this. Or not that I’m against tattoos. Tattoos are fine, but you know what I mean? Like, don’t resist so much and allow them to be who they are. And you wanna be a resource that they wanna come to you for advice. [00:12:00] And they trust you.

And I always say to my kids, I will never get mad at you if you tell me the truth. 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Heather Berlin: And that’s been great. It’s, it really works.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: We hope you follow along with us this week as we share expert advice from the strong families AZ home visiting conference. We’re back tomorrow morning with more.