- Your Child’s Gut is their 2nd Brain
Did you know that your child’s gut health is directly linked to their immune system and mood, as well as digestion? More and more, science is connecting the dots to prove that we truly are what we eat. Recent studies show that the gut, or moreover the “Gut-Brain-Axis” provides approximately 95% of total body serotonin (1) – the feel-good hormone that regulates mood and plays a fundamental role in the body’s neuropsychological processes of perception, anger, aggression, appetite, memory, sexuality and attention.
If your child is like my son, his tastes vary by the day! In order for me to get him to eat a balanced diet, including veggies, I have to constantly keep reinventing the wheel. One day it’s raw carrots and hummus, the next it’s slices of yellow bell pepper. Sometimes I chop up celery and throw it into tuna salad, where it’s almost imperceptible to the seven year old uber critic! Cucumber seems to be his most enduring fave. I recently acquired a bento-style lunchbox that seems to make everything more appealing. From my experience, variety, texture, color and presentation is the name of the game.
On top of balanced, enticing, regular meals and snacks, my son goes crazy for his gummy vitamins! His latest favorite is Culturelle® Kids Probiotic + Veggie Fiber Gummies. They come in a yummy berry flavor and in addition to the vegetable fiber, aid the body’s healthy balance of good bacteria in the gut. A great and easy way to help keep your kids healthy. Especially during cold and flu season, immune boosting support is a must!
Find it HERE
2. Simplicity Parenting
Lately I’ve been feeling a bit like a mosaic comprised of the worst traits of my Mother and Father combined without the financial cushion. With respect to the culture of care and the valuing of caregivers everywhere, don’t we all need a freakin’ break? At the end of the day, yes the economy, the misogyny, the frankly paternalistic dialogues and underwhelming support granted to mothers and caretakers is maddening! And while I learned about Simplicity Parenting from my son’s Waldorf School, I know that this type of education, with its requisite centering of slowness, rhythm, patience and presence – is not always realistic, not to mention accessible, to all.
But what I do want to harness is my own personal power to make choices, and changes – even if they are slow and unsteady ones. Simplicity Parenting, popularized by Kim John Payne, is a revolutionary set of parenting tools designed to teach parents small, actionable steps toward creating a more connected home life. Counterintuitive in our more is more kinda world, the Simplicity Parenting techniques impact families and most importantly children by building better relationships with more confident, happy kids. The philosophies are available to the public in the form of a podcast, group trainings, lectures and private consultations. I find the podcasts most helpful, as they offer short 12-15 min episodes with clear strategies to increase confidence as a parent and learn to better support our children through difficult every day situations while living closer to one’s hopes and values. As Marcy Axness writes in Parenting for Peace “Our current parenting styles rely upon certain culturally sanctioned yet invisible dynamics of power and subtle violence that don’t foster a child’s vital, authentic, integrated self – the foundations for true adult maturity and the qualities necessary to experience and create peace.” (2)
While I know most all parents start out with good intentions, I think where things get sticky is when we’re under stress, underresourced, and falling back on knee-jerk reactions, including our own parents’ draconian disciplinary styles. Is there such thing as a healthy disciplinarian? What I love about the Simplicity Parenting model is the way that it boils down common scenarios all parents face into teachable moments. On that note, when it comes to teaching our children, it’s absolutely a two-way street! At the same time, our kids often suffer when we become too wishy-washing setting boundaries… and they will do their best to test us and knock any and all limits down! If you’re not sure where to start I suggest taking the quiz on the website to establish your disciplinary type. I’m the “Governor” type.. which is good for a Mother of a seven year old, but less effective and even damaging as my son becomes a pre-teen. As My son grows up I will need to adjust toward a style called the “Gardener” (tweens) and then “Guide” (teens), evolved parenting approaches which bring the child in as a co-conspirator. With this helpful information, I was able to not only cut down my ego to size, but strengthen coherence between my values and actions as a Mom, bringing more peace and harmony into our daily rhythm at home. They even offer a free Simplicity Parenting Starter Kit!
Find it HERE
3. On Screen Time
Honestly, I was raised by a brilliant, baddass Mom that cooked and gardened, took us to museums, operas, thrift stores and cultural experiences. Mom engaged my imagination with baking, plays, shows, science experiments and plenty of theatrics. I grew up with a big back yard, a dog, rabbits and a pond. But you know what else? Hours and hours spent in front of 90s era television like Ninja Turtles and Gem. Now I know – it’s the world’s best babysitter. And here’s why I don’t have one in my home.
As an older millennial, I had the privilege of observing my generation as we crossed over the threshold into information overload, influencer hierarchies and generation wired. I noticed my attention span really plummet in those early years of Myspace. It made me weirdly popular, but also less focused. As a new parent, early on I came upon the research of Marcy Axness, author of Parenting for Peace quoted above. It was after reading her book and digging into some of the concepts detailed below that I decided to limit screen time to family movie night. This means my child doesn’t get an iPhone (for several more years) and only watches movies intentionally, with a family member or two snuggled up beside him.
Let’s talk about brain development. When a child is watching TV, their creative brain centers are offline. Studies show that while TV conveys loads of information, it doesn’t actually increase a child’s vocabulary. Even if your child is not actively suffering from the proven negative impacts of screen time (obesity, increased aggression, desensitization to violence, gender stereotyping, warping of reality perception, increased materialistic drive and susceptibility to commercialism) you still have your kid’s highly elastic, developing cognitive and intellectual skills to worry about.
Did you know your child’s brain is more active sleeping than watching media? The way a child uses their brain determines how it develops. A child engaged in a story read to them by a warm, present parent is a creative brain hard at work, in contrast to an inert brain watching TV. Not only is screen time just plain bad for brain development, it’s creating a physiological reliance on the sense of overstimulation and chaos it provides. According to Axness, the standard cuts, pans and zooms which happen every few seconds during a program or commercial elicit our brain’s instinctive reactivity, triggering neurochemical fight-or-flight (designed to help us ward off predators, not surveillance capitalism!) and ultimately unleashing an addictive dopamine response. Axness writes, “What happens to people when for the first time in human experience they spend hours at a time having their orienting response subliminally triggered every few seconds?” The answer is not only stunted brain development, but reliance on a heady sense of habit-forming euphoria we get from watching.
Not only does your children’s newfound chemical dependence on screens actively erode their desire to play outdoors in nature, with friends and other humans (activities during which the healthiest psychosocial development of the brain is achieved through close human relationship) over time over-mediated children lose their innate curiosity, playfulness, willingness to experiment, flexibility, humor, receptiveness to new ideas and eagerness to learn.
The real issue is one of imagination, and unfortunately, “Television and computer images are junk food for imagination” confirms Axness. What your child’s brain needs is less Disney and more stories, conversation and meaningful hands-on activities. Your child needs symbols and metaphors that “act as nutrients” which challenge and feed the developing brain, while nourishing its capacity for imagination (3).
Get the Book HERE
NOTES
- “The Gut-Brain Axis: Influence of Microbiota on Mood and Mental Health” by Jeremy Appleton, ND. National Library of Medicine, August 2018, 17(4): 28–32
- Parenting for Peace: Raising the Next Generation of Peacemakers Marcy Axness, PhD, Boulder: Sentient Publications, 2012, p. 9
- Parenting for Peace Marcy Axness, ibid, p. 262-267
