00:00:00
I remember my youngest child, her dad would come home in the middle of the day for lunch and she would cry and cry and cry when he left. And I would be like, I'm here all day. I am feeding you, I taking care of you. He showed up for an hour. Why is he the one doing all that? Hi, Claire. It's fun to see you. I'm glad we're going to do a podcast together like usual. But some, some things are a little different today.

00:00:29
Yes, today is an extra special episode. We are coming to you all for the very first time from our brand new studio space. We've got a really fresh setting here, but Rachel and I want to reassure you we have the same mission we've always had. We're going to support you with expert insights about parenting and early childhood development. And you're going to leave today's podcast with some actionable tips that is right.

00:00:51
And today we are tackling some of the most common questions, things that listeners have have sent into us that we want to address. So we're excited to talk to you about tantrums, parenting styles, confidence, all sorts of good stuff. The, the meaty, down and dirty stuff of parenting.

00:01:09
Yeah. So again, these questions came straight from you listeners and the amazing parents in our Bright Horizons community. So if you've ever had any of these questions yourself, you're in the right place. So with that, we're going to get started with our first question that came in from a listener. I'm going to read it from my paper here. This question says, tantrums, exclamation point. How do I deal with giving and setting boundaries with my son? He acts like a different kid with his dad than when he's with me – Mom – He misbehaves.

00:01:37
So there's kind of two questions packed into that one, isn't there?

00:01:39
Yeah, she's asking about tantrums, which is a very, very, very typical thing. We see it in classrooms, we see it at home. I've seen it out in public, at the grocery store, in the library. This is just a thing that happens with young kids. There's nothing wrong with your parenting or your child if you a tantrum is.

00:01:58
Happening, it is just going to happen. Let's just say that it's going to happen. There is not a way to avoid this. And kids don't have the skills to manage these emotions or talk about how they're feeling. So you can interpret a tantrum as them saying, I am so overwhelmed and do not know what to do about it. And that is that if they could speak, that is what that tantrum is saying to you.

00:02:18
Yeah. They don't have the tools yet or even the brain architecture. To know how to get themselves out of a big feeling.

00:02:26
Right. So it's not like it's something you miss teaching them.

00:02:30
You're certainly working on teaching them some of these skills, but they just don't have that capacity yet.

00:02:35
That's right. That's right. Yet is the operative word. And we do get to teach them. Sometimes it doesn't feel like a privilege, but it is. We have a whole episode of Teach Play Love just about tantrums. So please go listen to that. Whoever sent in this question, Anyone who's interested in learning our really, really detailed strategies for navigating a tantrum. It's episode 65 of teach play Love, so check that out. That's our full rundown on the what, the why, the how of tantrums. But I do want to spend a few minutes talking about the second part of that question, which is about why and how children sometimes behave one way for one parent and then differently for another parent. And sometimes that means they're sillier or more quiet with one parent. And sometimes it means they're, quote, unquote, better behaved for one parent than another parent. And this is such a common question. I get this question all the time.

00:03:24
Yes. And it's not just when it's behavior related. It can be a lot of different things. I remember my youngest child, her dad would come home in the middle of the day for lunch, and she would cry and cry and cry when he left. And I would be like, I'm here all day. I am feeding you. I am taking care of you. He showed up for an hour.


00:03:43
Why is he doing all that?

00:03:45
So it's not. It's just anything. Right. We as parents know that different kids have different temperaments, different interests and different things going on. Different parents, there's different attachment styles, different warmth, all sorts of different stuff going on. So it's not just tantrums, but it can be the hardest to deal with when it's behavior issues, especially if you feel that the other caregiver or the other parent has an easier time with something so difficult.

00:04:10
It does feel like an injustice, doesn't it? So I do think that these differences in how a child interacts or reacts or behaves with one parent over another can be due to a ton of factors. You just mentioned some of them. So does one parent spend just blatantly more hours per day with the children than another one does that. So that is. That happens very commonly in families. Is one parent more often in charge of this one particular part of the routine? So dad always does bedtime, and the one time mom tries to step in and do it, it's a disaster. And it feels like an insult to the mom. But really, it's just the dad always the one that does bedtime. So that's why the kids are acting a little off routine. Because it is off routine. Sometimes kids are more likely to have big emotions and meltdowns and tantrums with the parent that they actually feel more attached to, which feels counterintuitive, right?

00:04:57
But it's not. If we learn about attachment theory and early childhood development, if a child always saves up their meltdowns and tantrums for one of their caregivers, it can mean that that is their safest person in the world.

00:05:08
They can feel like they can kind of let it all hang out for lack of a better. Yeah.

00:05:12
I mean, I talk about attachment a lot. Like home base in a game of. So when you're, like, running around crazy in life and you think, oh, God, I have to get through this. I have to stay safe. I have to do all these things, you go to home base, you put your hand on it, and you, like, take a deep, big, deep breath, and you kind of let your emotions out. And that is a little bit what you do with a person that you're most attached to.

00:05:31
So we, you know, it can be for all sorts of reasons, because it can also be with that they're not feeling safe or they're not feeling sure about what's going to happen next, or if they're off their routine, it just can be for all sorts of reasons. So I guess the. The ultimate thing would be not to read too much into it. Children are not as manipulative as we sometimes give them credit for. They are not masterminds thinking, I am really going to drive this parent crazy today, and I'm going to do this with them and do this other thing with them. They're very instinctual. One of the things about that instinctual behavior is they're reacting to what's happening in their environment. But they also kind of get that there are differences between people. So we all modulate our behavior for different coworkers, for different family members. We don't have to really think about how to do that. We just do that. And children start to figure that out at a pretty young age.
00:06:22
So it's not an insult to anyone. It's not a critique. It's just that you have different relationship dynamics and some of them are just really hard to explain or navigate. So like Claire was saying, there are some things you can think, oh, you know, what happened is we changed the routine or I asked them to do something they're not used to doing, and this is the way that they explained it. So. Or reacted to it. So maybe what you need here is to say, okay, what happened before this happened? What did we change? What do we do different? And help them build the skill sets through that tricky situation. And then again, notice the changes in you as adults and your behavior. And if there's something you did different, and then don't take it too personally.

00:07:01
Yeah, it does. Because guess what? A week from now it'll be different. And next month it'll be different again. Let's move on to our next listener question. This listener asks, what do you do if your parenting styles are completely opposite? I'm assuming that they're implying, like, parenting styles between you and your partner. Again, very, very frequently asked question in my workshops and my webinars with families. And we do have a whole episode just about parenting styles and outcomes. If you're interested in learning a little bit about the research and theory frameworks behind different types of parenting Styles, that's episode 77 of Teach Play Love. So, yeah, what do we know about this, Rachel?

00:07:39
Yeah, so I think parenting styles is a phrase that can be used very formally or informally. So I'm guessing this question might be using it a little bit informally, but Claire's talking about a podcast we did that actually breaks down formalized, academically researched parenting styles. So that might be a good one if you can get everyone on the same page to listen to it, to just understand the, the more academic orientation around parenting styles and then within the range of authoritative parenting, which is the one that we want, then you maybe you're going to make some different choices, especially if you're living in different households. This happens a lot. Or if there, if there's an introduced, an additional caregiver or a step parent that might be in the mix somewhere. So the biggest thing is to try to come to some agreements and some consensus without the child around to talk about it. What are your goals for this child? What do you want the outcomes to be of parenting? What's important to you? And everybody's going to have to make a couple concessions, even if whether you're living in the same household or not. But just try to center it around what are the goals for my children or this child and how do we get there together. So then it becomes less about the everyday moments that you're struggling with and it's more about the big outcomes. So I understand that if you're in the middle of conflict or it's a big struggle, this is so much easier said than done. So you can start with small things, of course, enlist the help of a professional if this is really tricky, because it can and you don't want it to affect you or your children. But it can be things like just starting with something that you can find a neutral place around is maybe mealtimes. Can we agree on meal times? Can we agree on some routines we're going to have? A lot of times I hear parents talking about frustration around bedtime routines. If a child is going to different households, or maybe if one of the parents is at home or one of the caregivers is at home for a certain time, things change at the household. So what could you do to like, why does that happen and what could you do to prevent that? And then just like kids, right. You probably need to pick your battles and think about the things that matter most.


00:09:43
Is it okay, maybe that the routine got off one night?

00:09:46
Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Is it. Is it's this person I feel stress coming from their question, what do you do if the parenting styles are opposite? I would really ask you to take a step back and ask yourself, is the stress? Is my child feeling stressed by this or am I the one that's stressed by this? Because the good news is it's really great for a child to have as many warm, nurturing adults in their life as possible. So having having someone that you're navigating parenting with, whether you're currently partnered or not, is great for your child. More, more loving adults. The best, better, great Being on the same team with that other parent. I don't know a single parenting partnership that hasn't hit a huge wall with that right? You get, you find yourself smacked in a wall with the person you're parenting with because you don't agree, you feel opposite from them. But the idea, what I want to, what I keep in mind with my co parent is that at the end of the day, we're on the same team, which is that we both love this kid so much. We both want what's best for this kid. And when my co parent does things that leave me scratching my head, I have to remind myself my Kid actually seems okay right now. I'm the one that's feeling upset and stressed about this. The kid is fine because their dad loves them so much and he's doing something that's a little different than what I would do. But for example, I'm not a risk taker in general as a person. And I don't love rough play, but my husband does. And so sometimes I see him rough, rough housing with our. When our kids were little. And I would get really stressed out, but that stress was me. I was getting stressed. The kids having fun. He loves the kid. He's keeping them safe.

00:11:22
So I had to let that go a little bit and say, we're both on the same team. This is really good for everybody.

00:11:28
Well, in our own experience, our own temperament, our own childhoods, everything plays into this. So as much as you can having those conversations about what do we want for our child, what are our shared principles, guidelines, can we ground ourselves in the same ideas around parenting? And I will end the answer to this question with really recognizing that sometimes this can get really difficult and you might be in a situation with a co parent or a co caregiver that you're not feeling they're even on the same place and on the more academic parenting styles. And it is absolutely fine. And a good idea to get some outside support and resource for that because that right there is also parenting.

00:12:09
Yes, absolutely. Okay, next question from our next listener. How do we as parents deal with anxiety about our kids going to daycare slash school? Wonderful question, Ann. We have an episode about this too. We have a great episode. Episode 69 of Teach Play Love is about tips for the first days of child care. So again, in that episode, we go through kind of the nitty gritty how to navigate those early days, early weeks of being in a new childcare setting for your child. We also have a great episode, episode 47, that's just about separation anxiety. When your child exhibits separation anxiety. What I like about this question, Rachel, is that the parents talking about their adult, the anxiety they are having about separating from their child.

00:12:53
Yeah, yeah. It's a tricky one. I mean, I've worked in early care and education for nearly 30 years now. Both of my children, my oldest was in a center with me, and my youngest was in a center where one of my best friends was the center director. It was hard for me. So you are, that is, that is a biological connection you have with your child. You are supposed to feel a reaction to something that feels to you or that you're interpreting is that they're having a little distress or stress. So that is just. Is that's a good thing that you're feeling like that? I think there. I would bring us back to the academics about this. I think that I can take some license here and say there is no research that tells us that there is a negative of children being in a high quality early care and education setting. And in fact the opposite is true. The important thing is a high quality early care and education setting. And we have a lot of confusion about what that means in this country. So doing your research, making sure you're using reliable sources, we at Bright Horizons have some childcare checklists, some questions you might want to ask, some things that you might not even be thinking about, like what's the professional development for your, for your staff or what are your. How, what are your guidelines about how you implement play and learning into your classroom? And what, how do you get children ready for school and how do you build relationships with teachers? So I just rattled off a few. I could give you about a hundred of them. You might not have thought of some of those questions. So if you feel like you're equipped with the right questions, you've done, you should open door policy. You should be able to go in and visit, you should be able to visit a couple times. You should be able to freely ask all these questions. And when you have decided you have found a safe, high quality organization that will communicate with you throughout the day, you can know that as a parent, you are making a choice that is good for you because you're making a choice to work as, as a priority for you, for your family, and that is helping your child. But you are also giving them a great head start, a great foundation in life and there is nothing wrong with. And when you have, at least for me, when I have the facts and I'm not listening to the commentary that can happen in social media or people's opinions, I am getting my research from reliable sources and consistent information. I feel much better about the decision I'm making, even though it can still feel really hard and emotional. But that's okay. I'm okay with those emotions. I mean, my best friend had to shove me out the door a couple times, but I. It happened. It's okay. It's a habit. That's what makes us good parents, is what's fallible. We're imperfect and we love those kids.

00:15:32
I think it's a really good sign if you're feeling a little bit of sadness or anxiety about separating from your child. It means you both are securely attached to each other. Exactly. And before we move on to our next question, I'll just quickly add that, you know, give those feelings that you're having some space. Right. Use your best self regulation tools and please do not share your anxiety with your child. They are not responsible for your feelings. They are busy having their own feelings. Right. And so you as the adult in the relationship need to again, not co regulate with them at this point. You're self regulating. You're, you're taking a deep breath. We need to, you're stepping in the next room and you're calming yourself down. You're going to call a friend, you're going to talk to someone about how you're feeling, but not your child. Your child doesn't need your anxiety on.

00:16:12
You can sit in the parking lot for 20 minutes, you can go on that director's office and, and tell them you need a moment. You can do all that. But when you go back in the classroom or you're telling your child, I'm worried about you or I had to pick you up early, I'm so worried, or whatever you're saying, you're also conveying to them, I'm not sure about this place. Yeah.

00:16:28
So be confident in front of your child. Be confident, be open to their feelings and just, just convey as much as you can that this is going to be a really healthy choice for our family. So our next question sent in from a listener is I feel like I am not equipped and not trying as hard as I can to make playtime educational. I need a starting place. I love this question because what it says to me is this parent wants to play, they play is on their radar. That's half the battle right there. They want to play with their child and they're interested in making it an educational experience.

00:17:00
So here we are talking about play again, favorite thing. So first of all, you could take, go on a piece of paper and write the word play and then versus and then learning and then real quick cross out that verses and just write is so you've got it. You've already, it's already happening. Play is learning already and educational experience. But we hear your question. You're asking for a little bit more here than just embracing play. So there's all sorts of things, it depends on your child's age. We could go through a couple ages and share a couple examples quickly.

00:17:33
So an infant, you are, you are going to play with an infant. I know that might, that might that might be a little surprising. But even in newborn, you can play with a newborn during those very brief moments of quiet alert time. You're just going to put them about, you know, a few feet away from your face. You're going to try to let them focus on your face.


00:17:52
They love faces. Rachel always says, I love offering babies my face. That's what they want to see. And you're going to just, you can mimic their facial expressions. You can just say their name to them. You can tell them about your day, tell them about your favorite episode of your favorite television show. It doesn't matter at that point, right? You're just making conversation with your newborn.

00:18:10
Baby and let them respond to you. Even if it's a finger wave or a toe curl or a gurgle, they are returning the conversation to you. Millions of neural connections are happening in those little sweet moments. You started playing peekaboo. Actually, I was on a, I flew in yesterday and I was on a shuttle bus and a whole group of teenage boys that were here for a hockey tournament because they all had their hockey sticks were playing peekaboo was about a nine month old baby and she was, couldn't quite figure out where to put her hand, but she had figured out that she was in a game with these kids and it was, she was having a great time, but she was also learning. She was learning about what's gonna happen next and anticipating and predicting things and she was learning about emotions and regulation and she was learning about object permanence. Is something here, even though I can't see it. All sorts of good stuff.

00:19:00
I mean, that's a great example. There was no fancy toy. There was no screen involved. It was just people reacting and acting at other people. And that is play for an infant. And even into the toddler years, you don't need anything fancy, okay? You don't need any, any expensive material.

00:19:16
In any of the years. You don't need anything fancy.

00:19:18
Right. So as you move into the toddler phase, play becomes a lot more fun, in my opinion because now you're having some cause and effect happening. They start to understand late in infancy into early toddlerhood that they can impact their environment pretty, pretty heavily. So you have, you're beginning to take turns, maybe very early turn taking. You are doing lots of, I mean, anything is play, right?

00:19:40
Any interaction at this point, they're going to find, they can find playful and make playful.

00:19:45
So when you're thinking, when you're asking a question like learning or how do I make it more educational. We often are thinking about those cognitive elements, so you can start asking questions. You can introduce textures, shapes. You don't want to grill them on something. You don't want to constantly be asking them what color is something or what number is something, or those are things that should be happening in meaningful ways. Or you can talk about that in that I see these sunflowers are yellow. What else is yellow? Can you find something else that matches the color? Oh, that's similar. That is a similar color. You're introducing vocabulary. You're getting them thinking. They might not be able to respond, but they're sure thinking about it. Instead of, what color is this? What color is this? What color is this? We don't. We want to avoid those things. Those are memorization activities. But the other thing to think, really think about at all the ages, but definitely toddler years, is physical development is really important at this age. Yeah, that's educational. Physical development, all development. We really think about whole child development or interdisciplinary development. It's all happening at the same time. So cognitive development is stronger when there's good physical development. Mass development is better when there's music going on. It all interplays with each other. And those toddlers, they are learning. Have you ever asked a toddler if they can jump? They barely can get off their tippy toes. They don't quite know what a hop is. They can't really. They're trying to blink and think. It's. It's so cute. But you can see this progression of being able to control their body, and they're starting to understand what they're capable of. That's why they're climbing on things. That's why they're dumping things out. They are finding out, will this happen every time? And they're kind of saying, like, check me out. Did you guys know I could do this? I just found this out. Yeah, it's really fun. I'm able to do this. So let that physical play be also educational and academic to you as well.

00:21:32
I would say as you move into the preschool years, lean into how naturally curious preschoolers are about everything. Follow their lead a little bit with play. We've talked about this in other podcasts, but they're little scientists. Let them test out ideas. If they want to test out ideas, let them take some healthy risks. Those are risks. Like, I'm going to try jumping off this part of this playground structure, and you know that that's not a hazard for them. And you're going to say, great, let's See if you can do it right. That's play. They're learning about everything, what they're capable of.

00:22:04
That's a really important educational aspect.

00:22:07
And you can weave in all those academic competencies into play. You're playing with. You're collecting a bunch of sticks in the yard and you can say, do you think I have more sticks than you? Or fewer sticks. How can we find out? Right. So much math right there. That's math. It's critical thinking. It's reasoning. And so you're weaving it into the play with a curious question. I wonder about this. How did that happen? Why'd you make that decision? Well, that was a cool choice that you made. Can you tell me about it? Just all these kind of naturally curious, scientific questions lead to really great learning during play. And if you wanna learn a little bit more about play, we have a podcast. Yeah.

00:22:45
We have an episode.

00:22:45
Episode 57 is about having more fun while playing with your children.

00:22:50
Yeah. I think that's really the important part of it, is it. It's okay to have fun. Actually, it's fantastic. If you, as the adult, are having fun with your child, you don't always have to be playing with them. We don't want you to be. For them to be able to play and have fun and engage that, you're a necessary part of that because those are good skills for them as well. But when you do that, it is really powerful for them. Even if you're just injecting new materials or giving them a challenge or a problem to solve or asking a question or teaching them a song, whatever it might be, they always have a little bit more fun in those moments where they can control the adult. I guess I would say anything you do that is building a connection or relationship because you're building those really good social, emotional skills which we didn't even touch on. But those are so important as well.

00:23:40
Also happening. And anytime you can get the child to do the thinking. One of the quotes I use all the time is, whoever is doing the thinking is doing the learning. So when you think about how to teach your child through play, get them to be the one who's thinking.

00:23:55
That is all the time we have for listener questions today that went by so fast. I really want to do more of these episodes in the future. So please send in your questions. You can leave them as a comment on our social media pages or you can email questions to us directly at tplpodcast@brighthorizons.com - your question might be answered in a future episode.

00:24:17
Yes, we really love diving into these questions with you. It's really fun for us. Cause we of course could talk about parenting topics all day long, share our wins and our fails. But it really is helpful to know what questions you all have. No question is too small or too silly, and you get to be anonymous when you're sending them in to us, so no worries about that. So please send them in and let us be a part of your parenting journey with you.