Healthy Parenting Tips in a Technologically Complex World

Dr. Ann and Dr. Estie discuss a recent article written by Rahm Emmanuel, on the specific strategies that he and his wife used to raise their three children. Offered are tips that minimize technology at the dinner table, stress the importance of reading together as a family and never ever forgetting to remind a child how much he/she are loved. 

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Music

Composer / Writer / Author: ROSSANO GENTILI - SIAE IPI: 161539866

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Hi, this is Dr. Estee Hess, and then I'm Dr. Ann Kirsch, and we are on and off the spectrum. Our podcast this evening is actually a very fun topic and uh probably the hardest job in the whole world.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Because it is about parenting. Good parenting. Good parenting, yes.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

It's based, our talk this evening is based on the discussion from uh the former diplomat Ram Emanuel. Uh for those who need a little update on Mr. Emmanuel's uh background, he was a Democrat that served as a U.S. representative from Illinois 2003 to 2009, uh White House Chief of Staff from 2009 to 2010, and mayor of Chicago from 2011 to 2019. He's also the successful parent of three adults, and he credits that to both a partnership with his wife and that he has parented like his parents parented. And so we thought we'd share some tips and some of the challenges to make that happen. Um, and this comes from a wonderful uh opinion section of the Wall Street Journal from last month.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Right. And it strikes me as you said that, Esty, is that there aren't many people that I work with as a therapist who want to parent the way their parents did wanted to. Most people feel like they want to go the opposite direction. I think that it's probably 50-50, but I also believe that if people, if the children of the parents were to sit back and really talk, talk to a therapist, talk to their friends, talk to family members about what their childhood was truly like, they might come away with a whole different perspective on what they gained and what they didn't gain.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

I'm agreeing. And what I meant in in Mr. Emmanuel's case, in terms of parenting like his parents, uh his parents had some, I guess what we were referenced, old-fashioned value systems. Um it might even appear as rather strict parenting, but I will tell you it also sounds to me like very involved parenting. Yeah. For example, the first uh I guess tip that that he recommended from his parents was that he had each of his children pick a book that he would read with the child. And it had to be, as we reference like chapter books. It couldn't be some uh, you know, few pages and or comic strip, you know, uh collection. It had to be something of of value and and and and merit. And uh the kids would protest as he protested to his parents. But eventually, not only did he learn something by reading these materials that were unusual and different, whatever the child's interest was, but there was being created a wonderful bond between himself and his child where they had a the start of beginning to exchange of complex ideas.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

That's very sm very good. That's very smart. Um, you know, we I think as parents tend to uh leave all the work to the teachers. The idea of complex ideas leave that to the teachers. But in reality, as parents, we want to teach our children also. And the idea of complex ideas has a lot of information in it. Can you describe a little bit of what you meant by complex ideas?

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Well, for example, uh he mentioned that he started to read, for example, an example, the private lives of presidents, first ladies, and lovers. Now that wasn't necessarily his topic, but I and he says he believed that one of his children picked the book because they knew his involvement with politics, and I think they were kind of trying to ribb it to him a little bit. But he found some interesting information that he hadn't known before. And so it led to some very interesting dinner conversations. And and speaking of dinner, he also, he and his wife had some pretty hard set rules. First off, absolutely no technology at the tables. And at a minimum, at a minimum, four times a week, they committed to having family dinners.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Now, that's what we did in our family, did you? Four times a week. And we, before dinner, when our kids were very young, we my husband would go to uh the bookshelf that had poetry. We read we read personally a lot of poetry. So he would pick out a book that was child-oriented and bring it to the table to many groans. Oh no. Ah, what are you why is it so big? And bring it to the table and show them what a chapter looked like. It was two pages. It was one and a half pages. And children started to realize that reading a book meant reading in the book. It didn't mean reading 500 pages like we did in high school in books. It meant there's a few pages in a poem that are interesting, and then we would discuss what it means. At first, our children were reluctant to discuss anything about any of it. After a while, and I mean a short while, two weeks, maybe three weeks, we started to notice that when one kid had something to say about a poem that was that we read, the other kid automatically would go against it. They had the opposite point of view. And our husband, my husband and I would look at each other with a big smile because we knew we were making some headway. It turned out over time we did this for years, truly for years, probably three or four years. It turned out that both of our children are wonderful writers and readers, and it all I believe is because we extended we extended what was available to us to them. And after a while, we also noticed that our children would go to the bookshelves and pick up books and just sort of sit down on a couch and just read at things. And watching them do that as we would walk through the family room, and you know, I would watch and I'd leave the room, and I'd just like so excited because they got it. Yeah, they got that it wasn't this is not a chore. We don't mean for you to be angry about this.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

But you said something very powerful. You said that today as adults, excuse me, both of your children are good readers and good writers, not a coincidence. Not a coincidence. I'm gonna go back one step further in terms of no technology, and I didn't just mean no phones by the children at there at the table, but it meant that, for example, if uh Mr. Emmanuel would come home and his wife would catch him on the phone, walking in the door, she would say, Turn around, go back in your car, finish your conversation. She didn't try to curtail whatever you know the issue was. She said, I'm I'm not discounting the fact this could be important. After all, he worked in the White House and whatever. He said, But when you walk in the house, that goes away. And that became a hard and fast rule because what happens oftentimes is our children catch us with doing these small and large uh uh and uh indiscriminate behaviors that create inconsistencies and they don't they stop believing us. So, in other words, if you're saying don't do technology and you've got the phone in your hand, what kind of message?

SPEAKER_01 9:23

And why should I believe you because you're doing something that we you told us not to do?

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Exactly, exactly. And even to go further, he suggested that when his children would have problems, homework and so forth, he was always available to them. But he didn't give answers. We'd have the tendency to say, let me just give this to you so you can this, you know, ridiculous homework, let's let's get this over with, and everybody can watch TV and go back to their lives. On the contrary, he would bring a book in or his work, whatever, into a child's room. Oh, and he made he and his wife made sure if one of them had to go out for the evening for whatever the purpose was, the other one tried to stay home as best they could. It's not that they didn't go out together on the occasion, but more often than not, there was always at least one parent home if possible. And the parent that was home would go into the room of the child and would just sit and do their work. And when the child would look up from doing their homework or had a question, they could simply say, I'm here, I need help. And what a wonderful, wonderful message. What a wonderful message. You know, it's funny. I'm thinking back in terms of the dinner hour. I had a family that I just saw the other day, and they have little guys, they have kids under the age of five. And they said, Well, we don't meet with our kids for dinner, and consequently, the kids are see, you know, they the kids eating the same kind of child fare nightly, you know, chicken nuggets and uh, you know, spaghettios and who's eating with the children? Nobody that's they're eating alone, the TV is eating. Oh they're watching the television, and so they're quiet and they're entertained and whatever else. But I said, first off, I said their diet could be varied, right? And the mom says, Well, you know, no. And I said, Well, do they ever see what you eat, or do they help you prepare for dinner? And they go, well, no, you can't give a knife to a five-year-old. And I said, Well, no, not a not a real knife, but you could give a blunted knife, you could have them be a you know a smaller version of a sou-sheft, get them more involved, or if you don't want to eat as early as your kids, because sometimes that's the complaint, then sit and just be with them during dinner. Try to encourage different foods, and oftentimes, even if it means eating earlier, if you were to try these really interesting vegetables or some kind of exotic sauce or a new soup flavor and so forth, it might make your child curious, like, mmm, especially if you're making all these wonderful mmm sounds, you know what? We uh we recently, Ann and I were recently on a on a wonderful trip to the to uh the the Middle East, and uh one of the things that we did is we ate a hot a lot. Um, and but I think we encourage each other to just enjoy food because you naturally make all these wonderful, mmm, the little delicious sounds and the sights and the smells and so forth. But if you're eating the same chicken nugget, chicken focused, I mean chicken, even the you know, pasta, whatever, the simple, high-carb, high-processed foods for your kids, not only is it not interesting, not only do the kids get an artificial sugar jolt uh as they crack come crashing down after after the too much intake of of sweeteners, they don't get an appreciation for what the dinner hour should mean, the complexity.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

And that's that is really the point. Because I think one of the things that we all said the most, as I think about it, as we were all eating, and there were a bunch of us, so was oh, what's that? What's that? Because we weren't eating the same thing, but we were eating things that we hadn't seen before. And we wanted to know. So what's that? What's that? What in the world are you eating? Can I get and I have a taste? Yes, and my husband recently said to me, I miss the food. And I said, What food are you talking about? And he said, I miss the food in the Middle East, yes, yes, because it was so much more interesting than what we're eating here. And so we talked about how we can up our game, just the two of us, our kids are grown. We could up our game in how we prepare food, how we make food, and we started doing that and adding different spices and and it and it and it makes a difference.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

It means not only is it more interesting, it's tastier, it's better eating quality, and it creates a more complex interactive experience, which I think is the point of how do you raise interesting, connected, empathic children. This is this is the foundation, and you start at this level of communal experience, and there's nothing greater than the can in the context of community than uh than sitting down for a meal.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

You know, when my son li loved when he was about four years old, he loved to cook with me. And what he loved to do was mix things up. So I would be over here, I would be cooking something, and he I he'd say, What's the what does that do? Pointing to the blender. And I'd say, well, that mixes things up and forms and it all gets kind of mushed together. And you can make a soup, you can make uh whatever. And so he's he started saying, Can I make a concoction? And I don't know where that word came from, but he said, Can I make a concoction? And I said, What's a concoction? And he said, Well, I could go into the pantry and I could take, he'd he'd mention vegetables and fruits and spices, and he'd say, What's this? And I'd tell him what it was, and I'd say, sure, add it all. Don't go above this line on the on the bottle. But he would make concoctions two times a week. And we we would taste them sometimes, depending on what was in it, but we never drank them, but they mostly were disgusting tasting. But they weren't like science, yeah. It was a science experiment. You got it. We had the best time. He would laugh and say, and say, this doesn't taste good, but it should taste good because we put sugar in this and that. And I said, you know how many times you don't know, but there are many times that I've tried cooking something and it did not come out good. You think I'm a really good cook, but that's because of years of trying.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

I I have to tell you, today in my sessions, I I tried to at least do one session a week, like the whole week, on a cooking experience. And so we were and we so we started to make some no-bake cookies today and in in my full day of sessions. And what was interesting is so we had to do some kind of experimentation because it turns out that it was much better as a loaf, it fell apart, and so it was much better as a loaf than it was cookies. So we talked about disappointment, we talked about frustration, we talked about experimentation, we talked about what do you do if something doesn't turn out the way you want, and and that's a great jumping off piece to you know what happens in life if things don't work out. So, again, it's the idea of creating this level of intimacy. But in that context, again, from this wonderful article on lessons from modern parenthood, Mr. Emmanuel talks about two more important concepts. One is so fundamental, he says if you want to raise smart kids, you have to expose your children to life. So beyond the dinner table, they would take their kids out to parks, to museums, to various forms of amusements, to various um arenas of music and social exposure and culture and world experiences because they wanted their children to be well-rounded, they wanted the children to be curious.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

And if they did that when they lived in Chicago, I spent a lot of time in Chicago and it's filled with amazing experiences in the time of the year when the weather is good, where there's music and food and dancing, and you name it, you have access to it.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

And it doesn't have to cost because one of the things that's mostly food that I know that we have heard from our uh viewership is what happens if, for example, you don't have two partners who are raising children? Right. What if you are a single parent? What if you don't have a lot of money? What if you can't be home with your children during dinner hour because you have to work and there's a sitter coming? And so, how do you how do you adapt these wonderful rules of parenting to still have parent uh wonderful children who turn out to become wonderful adults? And that's the last piece of of uh Mr. Emanuel's wise wise uh tips of parenting. You can't tell a child often enough how much they are loved. That's right. Right? When a child knows that they are valued, when a child knows that you are in their corner, they know that there is that they have meaning in the world. When a child knows that they have meaning in the world, they know they can succeed in anything that they try to do.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Because they know that if they make a mistake, they can come to you. Isn't that what we want from our children to be able to come to us and tell us, mom or dad, I made a mistake today. Then you get a whole opportunity to talk to them about what it was and how we can fix it.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Or I'm struggling, I'm struggling, and I know you value me, I know you love me regardless of what has happened, and I know if you could possibly can, you will help me.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

That's right. Because kids are afraid to tell their parents, the most loving parents, they're still afraid to tell them that they made a mistake because they know, kids know internally, they know that they should be doing everything right. That's how society treats children, and that's how we were treated. But if you can say to your child, you know what, you did the did you do the best that you could do?

unknown 20:45

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Yeah, I am so proud of you.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

I couldn't be more proud of you. Why? It didn't come out right. My son made a picture once, and it and he came home with it, and he my he was not the best artist. He was great in many other areas, but not in drawing art. And we would talk about this, it bothered him. And he came home with a picture, one of those bean, bean and macaroni pictures, and he came home and he presented it to me and he said, tell me what you think this is. He was six. And he just waited, and boy, I knew I was on the spot. And I turned it, I had to make it into something interesting and funny because I knew he knew that I wouldn't know what it was. So I turned it this way, I turned it that way, I turned it upside down, I looked at it and I said, I don't know. I haven't a clue. Do you know what it is? And he laughed, roared, and he said, Well, I can tell you what I thought it was gonna be. And he told me what I thought it was. Gonna be. And I said, I'm so sorry, but it doesn't look like that. And he laughed. We both laughed. It was this amazing moment of connection between the two of us because he wasn't gonna get in trouble because his picture didn't look the way he thought it should. It was a moment of connection because we both knew it didn't work.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Well, so what? Do you know what you also said? Something so profound. And you said, I don't know. Yeah. You didn't lie. You didn't say, well, let's see. Uh I think it's a lion, you're right. Because then he would know that you're fudging it. And and that's not the point.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

They know when you lie to them.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Without a question. And what happens is children value so much when they can hear a parent say, I don't know. I I really don't know. But you know something? I think, I think we can try to figure this out together.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Or maybe we gotta do research, or I don't know what, but you know, that's how do we make it look like what you wanted it to look like? You had you created an honest moment which leads to honest relationships. That's right. As we start off in this very beginning of tonight's segment, there's n there's nothing more wonderful, more challenging, no greater task than to be a parent. And to be a good parent, boy oh boy. It takes a lot of work. And we all make mistakes.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

We all and that's the thing we all have to remember as parents. We are gonna make mistakes right and left. And we have to give ourselves the grace to know that that's part of parenting. And we start over and over and over, just like we ask our children, okay, I don't understand what that is. Can we try it again? Tell me again what it is, and you laugh. Sometimes, sometimes my son would cry because he tried so hard and he couldn't get it to look the way he wanted it to look.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

But when you know that you have a parent who's in your corner. That's right. A parent who values you, a parent who validates you, a parent who stands behind you, a parent who puts away his phone, a parent who will go ahead and help you as best they can with the complexities of life. That's right. A parent who says, you know what, I get it. It was a crummy day. And that's okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

Try it again. Try it again. And I remember putting my arms around him and saying when he was so upset, and I would say, I understand. I understand it didn't turn out the way you wanted it to. Do you want to try it again? Sometimes he'd say no, sometimes he'd say yes. Whatever he said was what we did. Exactly. Because I wanted him to know that I heard him, that whatever he wanted to do, however he wanted to handle it, sometimes kids will say no in the moment, but the next day they come home from school and they say to you, Remember that picture I made? Well, I want to try it again. And you've already offered the day before, but you've got to go with the flow.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Drop, stop everything you're doing. And say, Great, let's try it again. Well, we're gonna continue. You bet we are. This is Dr. S. D. Hess. And I'm Dr. Ann Kirsch, and this is this is what we love. We love to talk about families and parenting and children and adults. So you'll hear more about this from us.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

We wish you both a life of love, a life of safety. Be well. This is on and off the spectrum. Good night. Good night.