Welcome to Round three of the Parenting Roundabout podcasts for the week of June nineteenth.
I'm Terry Morrow, and I'm here with Nicole Heretics Hello, and Catherine
he Leco. Hello. We're moms of teens and young adults, and when
it comes to parenting, we've been there, done that, bought the T
shirt. But we're still waiting for that day when we'll reach the finish line
and have no further need to lay down in a dark room with a wet
rag over our eyes worrying about something or other. Wednesday is complaint Day here
on Parenting Roundabout, and today we are complaining about more parenting research that potentially
could make our lives harder, or would if we still had little kids.
Well we don't, so Catherine tell us a little bit about this. It's
a dopamine. What's the dope on dopamine? Right? So I thought this
at NPR. It's it says it's called Tips to Outsmart Dopamine or I forget
the back title, but anyway, it's about the The author Michael and Duclef
coined the term anti dopamine parenting for what she's describing here, so she's not
trying to be you know, write a book and you know, come up
with a new term. She's just so basically, um, you know,
when kids are watching, you know, using screens or eating sweets or whatever,
they get a hit of dopamine. And not just kids, of course,
we also get this. Are they suggesting that we cut it out too?
Because this has been the episode of the paraging around about by gusts By.
So it talks about the research that like you think, like, okay,
I really need you know, an ice cream cone, or I need
to surf it's social media, or I need to watch another episode of TV
or whatever because that I'm craving it, right, and once I get it,
it'll I'll feel better or I'll feel good. And the research is like,
actually no, it actually doesn't make you feel better. It just makes
you want to keep doing what you're doing or to you know, do that
thing, and eventually you don't like it, and it's like, why am
I doing this? You know? I mean I think we have what we
can relate to that, right, You're like, why am I still on
Instagram like this? Why have I watched fifty Big Bang Theory clips in a
row? I never even watched that show, but it's oh, there's another
one. We thought you'd like. No anyway, So she comes up with
some ways to kind of deal with this with kids, and and honestly,
we could probably use them for ourselves, right, So wait five. Her
first tip is wait five minutes, basically like and I thought this was going
to be like give your kid like the five minute warning or whatever, but
it's more like, endure five minutes of them being mad that you took away.
You're living that they wanted an even and also, you know, out
of sight, out of mind, like if it's time to stop using the
tablet, don't like just plug it in at the bedside table, you know,
like actually put it where nobody can see it, right, And then
you know, there's some activities that a kid will feel better after they do
it. The example that she she gave was like she traded her kid playing
like sort of mindless games on a screen for playing a more educational app and
then the kids more willing to give it up. Yeah yeah, right,
smart thinking mom. And then another one was to create places in your home
where your child can't access or see problematic devices. Again, yeah right,
this is something Derek. This is something that we all, I mean,
we've all heard the advice not to keep our plugging our phone next to our
bed, but yes, does anyone do that? Mine is on my desk.
That's like I have to get up out of bed to go get it.
Oh my gosh, that's how I used to be right in the morning.
Well, I used to plug mine in down downstairs and then yeah,
go to bed upstairs until my alarm clock finally gave up the ghost and you
know, my old timy actual clock radio, and I had to start using
my phone for it. But so you take your phone and you put it
like the farthest surface in your room from your bed. So then when the
alarm goes off, you have to get up. You have to actually get
up. Yeah sometimes that works. Yeah, times you just then go back
to bed. But still you've got a little exercise in between. But yeah,
I can I can see that making an area for your kid that has
presumably other things that are entertaining, but not those things. Right, do
you have to lock him in there? You just like throw a cookie into
the room. I mean, there are books. Read the books. Right,
I'll be back to get you in an hour. You'll be fine,
Yeah, I mean I think this this definitely falls in the category of like,
this is this is sensible, and I definitely see why I should do
this. Um yes, but it does also sound like it might be hard.
Yeah yeah, and then hard to like model good behavior. Yes,
right, can you say when you're a grown up, you can watch a
screen anytime you want, bring mommies some ice cream and rife, go do
something else. Yeah, but again, like we've talked about this too.
You know, when our kids were little, we really didn't have yeah,
iPads, and we didn't Oh man, would that have been so great?
I can imagine just so many dinners out right. But this is yeah,
this is completely off the topic, except that it is a thing that does
not involve a screen or food. While I was mindlessly looking at social media
this morning and watching video after a video after video, there was a video
maybe you guys have seen this, where this woman she took a big bowl
and she put all her kids little toys, like little plastic toys in it
they could get wet, and she poured water over it, and she put
it in the freezer, and then when it was completely frozen, she went
outside. She flipped it over she pulled off the bowl and there's like this
dome of ice with all these little toys in it. And then she put
a little Elsa doll on top from dozing, and she called her a little
toddler out and said, look, Elsa, froze all your toys. He'd
like spent the latter next hour hammering at it and pouring water over it,
and just like and he would like pull one toy out and go. I
did it. And then he pulled another toy out and he said, my
muscle. I used my muscle. It was so adorable. And I realistically
know that if I tried to do that it would be such a gosh awful
mess that I would wish I had never done it. But looking it on
a video, what a cool idea. So that's the kind of thing you
need to do people. That's the kind of out of the box think.
And you got a show freeze your kids twice throwing outside and say when you
got all the toys out, let me know, I'll let you back in.
You can watch a five minute video and then and somebody also set your
toys on fire. See what you can do. But that's a cool idea.
I like that is that that is very clever. But oh my gosh,
he finally, finally, he kept throwing glasses of water on it to
melt the ice. And I'm thinking he's going to be completely wet and somewhat
cold. What he's done with this? Are you thinking he had his little
fingers at all? Right? But but there's no screen, There were no
screens involved. He was outside, right, He's never had the benefit of
watching the movie A Christmas Story to know that he can lick frozen. He
could learn something from that. There you go, it's a life lesson.
Wow. Anyway, we will link to this this article because I thought it
was it was interstable. You know. I like the white wait five minutes
thing in particular because I think that's good because sometimes kids need time to to
pivot. And if we're just wanting to row, settle down and just do
this other thing, it's like sometimes they can't. Sometimes they need to deal
with the feelings right and reorganize in their head what they're going to be doing.
I know kids with with um motor planning problems, which both mine were,
they need time. They need a yeah, yeah, a buffer to
move from one thing to the next. So interesting to think that all kids
need that with this dopamines thing, but you know, given the five minutes,
yeah, and it's it's also about like you know, know that it
will only take five minutes for them to complain about it, um so so
you can usually wake that out, you know, Yes, Like it's not
going to be a pleasant five minutes and you're gonna, yeah, you know,
you might falter and be like all right, fine, you can have
it back, you know, but if you don't, then you know,
pretty soon I'll get all right, But if you're going to fight with them,
it's going to take longer than five minutes. Yeah, absolutely, and
then you're gonna go fume for the next forty five minutes. So yeah,
just let it go. Well, we'll let go for today's round three.
Yes, and yeah, it's gonna say something to add on to that before
my mind is frozen. Okay. Tune in tomorrow when we'll obsess about what
happens when kids want to quit an activity, and then on Friday to see
what we've come up with for our Roundabout roundup picks this week. Find all
our episodes are Parenting Roundabout dot Com and talk back in the comments there.
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