Kids BRAIN Detectives: Recent Episodes
Jennifer Morrison, Ph.D.
Have you ever felt like parenting is a test you didn't study for? The detectives at Kids BRAIN are here to help take the mystery out of kids, parenting, and building the family that you want. With topics ranging from infants to teens headed off to college, we investigate them all.
In this episode, the Kids BRAIN providers close out the season with an ADHD round table discussion.
In this episode, Dr. Morrison, Dr. Rodriguez-Rivera, Dr. Caldwell, and Catherine Harris discuss educational and clinical aspects of ADHD.
In this episode, Dr. Morrison, Dr. Rodriguez-Rivera, Dr. Caldwell, and Catherine Harris discuss hyperactive/impulsive symptoms of ADHD.
In this episode, Dr. Morrison, Dr. Rodriguez-Rivera, Dr. Caldwell, and Catherine Harris discuss ADHD and inattentive symptoms.
In this episode, Dr. Morrison discusses educational and intervention planning for ADHD and attention problems.
In this episode, Dr. Morrison introduces the season and discusses the basics of attention.
In this episode, Dr. Morrison, Lee Fisher, and Dr. Rodriguez-Rivera discuss early ASD assessment and developmental assessment options for young kids.
In this episode, Dr. Morrison and Lee Fisher discuss special education services for young kids, including information on school readiness assessments.
Discussion of multiple topics including IEPs, 504 Plans, Special Education for very little kids, and handicapping codes.
Dr. Morrison and Dr. Caldwell discuss parenting through the lens of using love languages. This allows for parents to better understand how their children might need to receive affection in a specific way. The goal is to anticipate what they prefer and need in the form of expressions of love so that you can build long lasting and super strong parent-child bonds. Dr. Morrison: Welcome back, everyone. This is Dr. Morrison and Dr. Caldwell. Well, the topic for today is one that I don't have a whole lot of information on. So this is where Dr. Caldwell is going to school me a little bit. We're going to be talking about parenting with Love Languages. Now, I thought this was a couples thing. Is it? Dr. Caldwell: So originally, yes. This is a book called "The Five Love Languages." It was written by Gary Chapman, and yes, it originated as a book to help romantic partners basically give and show love in consistent ways. It has since been adapted into many other versions, one of which is how to utilize these strategies with kids. And so that's what we're going to be talking about today. So those of you who may be familiar with the original version, the ideas or points are the same, but we're going to be talking about how you apply this with kids. There are five different ways that we give and receive love, and I'll give you examples of these to kind of help highlight this point. The first one is words of affirmation. So when you hear that term, what do you think? Dr. Morrison: So affirmation is positive things. Words are words. So somebody saying nice things to you? Dr. Caldwell: Yes, somebody say, giving you compliments, specific types of praise, telling you things about your character that they like. Those are all affirming or validating words. Dr. Morrison: So it sounds like it would need to be something kind of specific though. So not like "good job," but something. Dr. Caldwell: Like, "I love the way that you interact with other people and that you listen to them feel heard." Or, "I love the way that you treated your brother when he was sad." Or, "I love the way that you light up a room when you enter it because of your smile and your affection." Dr. Morrison: Sure. So very person-specific, character driven, value-driven things that you are seeing and the manifestation of that person. You're commenting in a positive way as a compliment or a positive observation so that they can hear you noticing them for their assets. Dr. Caldwell: Right. And you do try to steer away from, and this is bringing in other research and other topics, but you do try to steer away from, "You're so smart." Dr. Morrison: "You are so pretty." Dr. Caldwell: Yes, things like that. You can make a situation-specific statement like, "Great job, I know you worked so hard on that project. I love seeing your perseverance." Things like that, kind of character traits. Dr. Morrison: So instead of, "You look so beautiful today," something that maybe is personal in a different way. "I love how confident you look when you wear that dress." Dr. Caldwell: Absolutely. That's a great example. Dr. Morrison: Like you're really rocking this, and it has nothing to do with your physical appearance or your body structure or shape or anything like that. That is not necessarily what we want our kids to get positive or negative messages on. It just is, right? Dr. Caldwell: Yes. Dr. Morrison: Okay, so words of affirmation, compliments, and things like that. But are there others? Because there's some people that this is not their love language, right? Dr. Caldwell: You mean are there other love languages? Dr. Morrison: Right. So everybody loves these the same? Dr. Caldwell: No. So that's the first one. Quality time is another one, and that is exactly how it sounds. And actually, in a different segment, we talked about this idea of what it means to be engaged. So when we say quality time here, this can look very different. But the idea behind it is if you put...
Episode 4 of the Mystery of How to Build Tolerable Humans, which covers ways to foster strength, resilience, and balance in the lens that they view the world through. Dr. Morrison: Welcome back, this is Dr. Morrison and Dr. Caldwell, and the topic for this segment is empowerment. This is a super broad concept because it could cover a lot of different parenting territories. We are going to use a little bit of our parent selves and a little bit of our psychologist selves to talk about what part of the parenting process is most helpful when we're trying to create humans that feel confident, capable, and are empowered to do the things that they're best at. So that's where we're going to start. So what does being empowered mean really? Dr. Caldwell: When I think of empowerment, I think we may not have control over what's going on around us, what's happening in the world, or what's happening in different settings with our kids. What we do have control over is the conversations that we're having in the home, how we're interacting with our children, and what lens we're helping them see out of when they process the world around them. Dr. Morrison: So can we talk a little bit about bias for just a second? Like the process of having a perspective because of what you expose yourself to, right? Like if you've ever done any reading or watching on the concept of how social media runs it's stuff, and I know it sounds like we're going off-kilter, but we're not. They [social media] runs on a series of computer algorithms. They take the things that you've watched before and then force into your social media account or your Netflix options or your YouTube videos things that are closely aligned with the things that you have watched before. So in essence, what it's doing is creating an information cocoon for you to be able to see and hear and be encountering things that are familiar to you because they're similar to things you've already watched. Dr. Caldwell: Sounds creepy, right? Dr. Morrison: It does sound a little bit creepy, because essentially what you're doing is creating an alternate worldview for yourself. You're creating this place where all of the information that you are consuming tells the same story. But, it doesn't necessarily tell the whole story. So if we're in a situation where we're trying to build little humans that have the ability to be powerful in their world, this means that we also have to think about how the messages that they're receiving from the videos that they're watching, their conversations with their friends, the things you are watching on the news, or the conversations you're having at the dinner table. These are creating a lens through which they see the world. You have to also think about whether, secondarily, the lens that you are creating is one that puts them in a position of strength and competence and capability, or if it puts them in a place where there's fear and there's a need to hide and there's a need to self protect. We have to think about if those messages from the things that we're surrounding ourselves with are filtering over into the way that our children are being surrounded by information too. Dr. Caldwell: And we're not necessarily talking about the Pollyanna approach here. Dr. Morrison: Sure. Dr. Caldwell: Like, "Oh, everything is great, it's all fine, no worries," right? Dr. Morrison: We don't want them in a bubble. We don't want them to delusionally not be aware of what's going on in the world. But we also want to be in a situation where we're helping our kids be in contact with things that they can be change agents for; things that they can be in control of. So, what kinds of things can our kids actually be in control of? Dr. Caldwell: I think it depends on the age. Right? Dr. Morrison: Sure. You have two and four year olds at your house. What can your two year old be in charge of? What can he be in control of? Dr. Caldwell: He can be in control of what he wears. Dr....
Episode 3 of The Mystery of How to Raise Tolerable Humans Series, where Dr. Morrison and Dr. Caldwell talk about building consistent follow through with expectations and the difference between punishing, natural consequences, and parenting "from the hip." Dr. Morrison: Welcome back to Kids BRAIN Detectives. I'm Dr. Jennifer Morrison, your host. I can't wait to share this week's episode. The topic for this segment discusses follow through. This kind of has two different parts to me because we want two different versions of follow through. We want the ability to be consistent, but we also want to create a scenario when we're parenting where consistency is likely to happen. So, it's almost two different brands of thinking. Let's talk a little bit though, about the consistency of following up on specific things that you need to happen. This is like when you're trying to model a specific behavior or decrease a specific behavior, and you want to have this consequence that comes into play. The question is how best to do that. My mom parented with the big consequence, big message theory, which is if I make an impacting enough consequence, then this is really going to change “young version of me's” theory on life and doing these things. I don't know that that really held any water. I'm not sure that over time that actually worked. What are your thoughts on the super big impact consequence for things? Dr. Caldwell: To be honest, I think you're almost setting yourself up for failure in that way. Some parents may be able to follow through with the whole “you're grounded for a month” consequence, and they think, “Well, the consequence has to match the behavior that you're trying to change.” And while I do agree that the consequence should match, you also have to think practically and really consider what the consequence is before you deliver it. Once it comes out of your mouth, that does need to be what happens. It really can't be adapted after that. Because if it is, what are you saying to your kid? Dr. Morrison: Sure. Well, negotiable right? That you can't be trusted to stick to your guns on something. That if they waited out, that eventually it will go in their favor. I think also what resonates for this with me is that sometimes when we are making consequences for our kids, we have also created a scenario where we (as parents) then don't get what we want. I'll give you an example. Let's say for my twelve year old, he has a little group of running buddies in the neighborhood and he has the freedom to play in our neighborhood without adult supervision. We live on a block where you can go to a couple of different houses and he's old enough now that he can cross the street to go hang out with friends or whatever. He wears a watch, and our expectation is always that he's going to have kind of a set time frame. “Hey, we're going to do dinner about 5:30. I need you home before 5:30.” Right. So that's the expectation. In this case, let's say as a scenario he comes in at 5:45, then my response could be, “Well, you don't get to play outside with your friends for the whole rest of the week.” Well, okay, that might make there be a consequence for this particular situation, but what is he actually learning from this? Now, he's not getting the physical activity and social engagement. It's not like he did something wrong while playing. He just got distracted and didn't come in in time. I want him to be punctual. I want this to be something that he's able to benefit from. But maybe “you don't get to play outside for the whole rest of the week” and shooting from the hip was a big reactive response. Why do you think that might be a pitfall? What's wrong with that particular consequence? Because it seems like it would be a natural consequence. Right? Dr. Caldwell: It does. Yeah. And in a minute, I want to talk about what natural consequences are. Dr. Morrison: Oh, sure. Good. Sorry, we'll backtrack to that in a second. Dr. Caldwell: So I think
Dr. Morrison and Dr. Caldwell, in Episode 2 of The Mystery of How to Raise Tolerable Humans, talk about ways that busy parents can create moments and time to engage with their kids without a lot of fuss. How To Create Tolerable Humans-Episode 2 (Parenting With Connection at the Core) Dr. Morrison: Welcome back to Kids BRAIN detectives. I'm Dr. Jennifer Morrison, your host. I can't wait to share this week's episode. Welcome to what we're calling Parenting Pointers. This is Dr. Morrison, and with me, I have Dr. Katy Caldwell to join in because both of us individually had this as a topic on our to do list and so we thought, “Why not just talk about it together?” We come from two different perspectives, so I think it was nice to join us together. Neither of us are parenting experts because they don't exist. All of us are just, in my mind, experts on a subject that happens to also be parents and sometimes that makes it harder. I know the psychologist version of me shakes its head at the parenting version of me all the time. So, what we're going to do over the next couple of segments for the Parenting Pointers elements is to talk about some broad strokes for things that can help parents in general to be better people and better parents within their family. But this is not a set of prescribed “do this” and “do things that way” however many times a week kind of thing. The first concept we're going to go with is some thoughts on how to be engaged with our kids. Dr. Caldwell, what does that mean? Dr. Caldwell: That's a good question. So, parenting can feel like you're wearing a lot of hats. I don't know how many hats that you wear or if you've actually counted, but there's the scheduling manager, unfortunately, sometimes the drill sergeant, short order cook, chauffeur, etc. and you are trading around between these hats many times a day. Dr. Morrison: Sure. Well, I always feel like I'm switching jobs, too, like on my calendar even. It's like I wake up and get ready. So, there's a getting ready version of me and then I’m making sure everybody eats breakfast at my house. And then the chauffeur part kicks in because I have to get everybody through carpool. And then I hit the office and it's like a physical hat change to the psychologist version of me, which is still thinking about kids and family and what's going to happen at dinnertime, but for a time that is set aside. It's a role that I don't have actively engaged while I'm helping other people with their stuff as a psychologist, but it is always running in the back of my mind. And then carpool hits again. Take off that hat and switch to driving around mode. It is kind of a change from one role to another throughout the day. Dr. Caldwell, you have littler kids, but I have bigger kids. All of them are boys. So, for those of you that are girl moms, sorry about that. Our perspective is boy moms, at least for a few minutes, but we think this still applies to all parents in general. The question is, how are you engaged when you're doing those constant shifts between parent roles and trying to do a good job in all of these roles. What does engagement look like at the same time? Do I have to do something fancy? Do I have to carve out extra time? How do you handle that? Whew, that’s a lot of questions to address. Dr. Caldwell: So the answer is no, I don't think necessarily you have to carve out specific time. I think sometimes when you are able to, it is helpful. But I think the big thing here is just being intentional with the time that you have. I think sometimes we think being an engaged parent means that on a Saturday, if you have young kids, you are expected to play with your kids all day long, be involved in their play, and do everything that they want to do. If you have older kids, I know that this looks different, but that's not really what we're talking about here. You can be an engaged parent by just being intentional with the time that you do have. Sometimes a really good...
Two psychologist moms who are definitely not parenting experts discuss being flawed and still being able to raise good humans. Dr. Jennifer Morrison hosts Dr. Katy Caldwell