(00:00:00) I'd first like to start off by saying that I think Minneapolis and Minnesota are about 10 years ahead of the rest of the country in terms of the but you really deserve to be congratulated. I think I use you and Hawaii as the two models of what we could be doing in the u.s. Today in terms of social supports for families and children because in general families and children are on the bottom of the list and when you go to Washington to try to get any action or whatever you run into roadblocks that you just can't believe I think people in Washington are feeling hopeless. They don't feel like they'll ever get anything done down there. And of course that hopelessness spreads down to the least of us which is families and children the kind of tensions in this country are just incredible when you think about it the ones I keep running into but as an advocate for parents are the lack of an extended family for most people most people are moving around the country so fast that they can't keep up with their family. But even more serious there's the generation gap in thinking and this interferes with communication and an extended family serves a major purpose when you're in trouble and the other thing that I think that goes with it is we've lost a sense of community now don't feel that and Minneapolis. So I hope that's true and we'll see that later. But in most inner cities nobody dares turn to the next door neighbors isn't that critical? Isn't that serious then value systems. This is the second thing that I think dog new parents. I have new parents say to me, you know, I don't know what to raise my children for I certainly don't want to raise him to believe in what we as a nation stand for war aggression money power. Does anybody want to hand that on to their kids and when we went around the country last year with our television show to try To uncover value systems around the country. We ran into some very interesting things people still do have values, but they have them submerged underneath the value systems that we ran into were strong ethnic belief systems that are still there ready to be brought back religious values that people no longer act on but they're still there can't we get back to those can't we possibly go back for our children's sake and bring them up again. The other things that that worried me are the kind of ethnic hatreds that we have not addressed in this country. I came back from Yugoslavia last year with Jim Grant from UNICEF having talk to those kids over there about the horrors that they faced because of ethnic hatreds and I thought you know Allah is trying to tell us the same thing is In on here, we had better start addressing how we feel about other ethnic groups and we'd better get them to start addressing it with us. These are all things that are going to affect your children and my grandchildren in their lifetime if we don't and I have people say to me now with small children with babies. What am I raising my kids for? You know, how am I going to be able to be sure that child is okay are perfect. So when he hits sex and violence and drugs in the teenage years you'll be okay. So these are dogging all parents and then we come to the biggest issue. I think today which is that we've asked women to split themselves into and we haven't supported them for that split. They have done it and done it successfully up to 70% of women in the full-time Workforce have children at home. But do they have supports from our society women are split into wanting to nurture and wanting to be good in the workplace and they've got the excitement that goes with it. But so far we haven't backed them up as we ask men to do this. I hope things are going to change once we get CEOs so they want to be split and take care of the family at home and take care of the work place. We're going to get changes. None of us can dream about I can tell you right now, which yeah well, Set my family says sexism is my strongest suit, but I have three daughters militant daughters. I can tell you which father's take care of their small children. And which ones don't by they by the way, they walk you want to know how? As I walked down Brattle Street in Cambridge and I've taken care of most of the young people in Cambridge over the past 40 years. I can tell as the father walks up to me on the street whether he's involved with his children and not the ones who aren't still walk. Like they always did with their eyes on the ground for fear. They might catch eye-to-eye contact the ones who are taking care of their small children walk like this looking for somebody to tell what the child's just done. Absolutely Telltale. So we are asking men to step in and get going and as we do we're going to have to support them to so these are the things that I think we're we're we haven't done much about now, there's one other pressure on young parents and that is that they know we know a lot about children's development and you'd say hey, isn't that great that backs them up? Yes, it is great. But it also puts them under a hell of a lot of pressure. They feel like if they don't read the right book our don't see the right television show. Our don't have exactly the right information. Their kids won't be perfect and they won't be perfect. So in a way this knowledge of Child Development becomes a kind of backlash and so I feel a little bit guilty. It's the ending up here to talk to you tonight about what we know and how we can use it but I think it's worth it. I hope so. I think we're counteracting three biases in this country that keep us from looking at what's happening to Children and Families in this country that's leading to the kind of violence and substance abuse that we're into and that we're all so frightened by 18 percent of babies that are born in Boston to at the Boston City Hospital are Bourn to substitute. It's abusing women and are having to withdraw 4428 months after birth 25% in Chicago 25% in Washington and New York 38% in Miami this ought to be scaring the Daylights out of all of us and this of course is leading to a kind of violence of one teenager killing another in Boston almost every day. So why haven't we as a nation faced this I've just come back from France and Ireland. They don't have all this over there. They don't have the kind of poverty the kind of desperation the kind of anger in their children that we do and I think the three biases are really worth talking about because once let me remind you that bias is only operate if you aren't aware of them if you're aware of them. You got a chance to say hey, I don't want to do it that way one bias is That we basically think families ought to be self-sufficient in this comes from our pioneering background and if they're not they ought to pay a price for it, so we don't do anything to really help parents our families. We do things like welfare, which is as you know from David Ellwood one of your fabulous products from out here, but welfare is like a cancer in our society. Are we do something like welfare reform which we shove women off the workforce and leave their kids high and dry. So that's one bias the second that is universal. I think you probably feel it. I certainly do and I would still be talking about it if my three militant daughters hadn't gotten on me. They they said dad you're in the last century come on catch up and this bias says women ought to be home with Kids and if they're not their kids are going to suffer and they ought to suffer and the trouble with this bias is that it really puts people under so much pressure that they can't really function well and either of the compartments and also it keeps us from doing anything substantive to a come up like decent childcare. So we got to get rid of that bias. The third is the most serious. We don't like failure in this country. We like success and we don't like poor people and we're not going to do much about them and it has led us into what I call a dumb rat model and it come this dumb rat idea comes from a professor at Harvard who first randomized first grade students, remember that and gave him to to teachers and he told one teacher Bob Rosenthal, he said to the first teacher your kids only have an IQ of 90. Then he said to the other teacher your kids have a hundred and ten the end of first grade. Ninety a hundred and ten. Well, he did it across species took a bunch of rats and put them into cages and he labeled one dumb rats and the other smart rats and he got his graduate students to put them through a maze but he filmed his graduate students. And of course they did just what you'd expect. They pick up a dumb lower-class rat like this drop him in and he couldn't stagger through they pick a smart middle class rat like this and put him down. He'd run right through now, I think we do this all the time without knowing it. I know we do at the Children's Hospital in Boston, which is a very family-oriented place. It is changed completely for any of you who may have had past experience. We really Do nurture families while their children are in the hospital. But if you walk into our emergency room looking middle class and ready to fight the system. Somebody says, can I help you? Just walk in there looking depressed or ethnically diverse or any of the things that might go with having a sick child or feeling like you aren't equal to what you're living up to and somebody comes up and says what's wrong with you. (00:11:40) They can't even answer (00:11:41) that of course, everything's wrong. So we'd better change our model. We'd better get rid of these biases and get on with the job of changing to a positive model and we can do it. We know how to do it. We can begin to think positively instead of asking people what's wrong with them. How about saying gee what's working? So right with you? Look at that baby you got in your arms, isn't she gorgeous when she looks in your face? She lives down like this and you look right back at it with that. Same lidded look, aren't you having a great time? And we could change the model so fast people would begin to sit up straight respond drop their defenses. We'd have them in the palm of our hands. All we need to do is start talking children instead of failure. So with that in mind, let me do a little of that. I'd like to change the model. I'd like to bring back communities and an extended family and I'd like to give that values to families then individually. I'd like to give them some guidelines for instance if both parents are working. We know they're stressed and we know that the workplace is not really lived up to it yet, but it's coming and the one thing that parental leave Bill did was make everybody aware that they better be family friendly so we can put a little bit of extra pressure on workplaces and get them to change their Then I would also teach both parents how to cheat on the workforce save up energy during the day. When your when your boss calls you Whaley calls the third time before you pick it up. And as you go to answer his call just go through the Halls like the kids say cool out on the way down the hall learn to save up energy, you know, what's going to happen when you get home, you know, those kids are all going to fall apart and everybody's going to be on your back. This is an expectancy. It's not a guess and so save up energy. So when you walk in the door everybody screams at you, you just sit down with all of them in a great big rocking chair and rock and when they reach up and grab for your face, you look down and say, how is your day and they say when you say mine was to I missed you. So much and at the point where they finally began to look you in the face and then scramble to get down. You've done it you've gotten back together then go and do your chores. Don't do them first then go in the kitchen take them with you. Let them learn to be part of the solution kids are dying to become part of the solution in Working Families. Why not? Let them learn early one of the problems for people like me is I never did anything when I was little when I married a woman who expected me to wash dishes and you know, clean up after things. I don't I really didn't know how she doesn't believe that but I didn't so these are things we can pass on early and I would certainly suggest it. Now the other is that I would begin to learn to listen to your kids parents always ask me. How can I be sure when I'm on the right track with my kids. I say learn to watch and to listen none of us have been taught to watch or to listen. We should we've been taught to tell and to direct couldn't we learn to watch our kids and to see what they're trying to say with us? And if you start from the first it's easy baby's behavior is so easy to tell what they're trying to say to you. If you're doing the right thing with them. They always look back at you like this with that rhythmic thing of their eyes, you know, and their whole body is like this when you look when you're on the wrong track, Absolutely clear what they're trying to tell you. Well this starts right at Birth and if we could learn that language then when they begin to speak, you know half the time they're not saying what they really mean you can tell by their body whether they're on track or not. (00:16:18) So I'd like to start in pregnancy. I think every pregnant parent male or female goes through a kind of turmoil that's predictable. But one thing all parents wonder how in the heck am I ever going to be a parent will have to be like my parents I sure don't want to be like that and yet they know they will so that's the first conflict the second conflict is what kind of baby have I got have I got that perfect baby, you know everybody dreams about the perfect baby the three-month-old baby. They when you lift them up their eyes and their mouth come open and you say how are Do it in the baby girl. Do you think that's right and the baby goes to a second time. Then you say come on do it one more time and they go. Oh, oh. Oh' third. Well, that's a three-month-old baby. But every parent dreams about that but to balance that every parent I've ever met also dreams about an impaired baby and every kind of impairment they've ever run into crops up in the middle of the night or when they're off somewhere Dreaming or wandering and they need to expose that they need to bring that up because these two babies are dredging up energy. I call it an alarm reaction, you know, an alarm reaction raises your blood pressure your pulse and gets blacks oxygen to your brain so you can react and do the right thing. Well, I think these two babies are dredging up energy so parents can make it Any kind of baby they get so they're serving a major purpose, but they also are trying to relate to the real baby the one here and to do to be ready for that as a pediatrician because I like into the parent-infant relationship way back in pregnancy when I can get to know each parent. We've been doing some research and I'd like to describe it to you. We've been looking at seven months fetuses with an ultrasound machine and I'll just describe one mother that we did this with she would this was out on the west coast and this I was explaining to this mother what we're going to do that we're going to be watching her fetus with the ultrasound and that we didn't have any any thought that the ultrasound would make any difference to the baby. And so I was just getting informed consent remember that and its mother finally said, dr. Quit apologizing I got three boys. Um, this is gonna be one more boy do anything you want have fun. So we got our in front of the ultrasound machine. It was a girl. Well, she changed immediately. She sat fard watching everything I did and what I did was this you take a buzzer about 18 inches out from the abdomen and it goes in the whole uterus jumps second buzzer. Let's jump third buzzer practically no movement by the fourth buzzer. They close their eyes shut their mouth put the thumbs in their mouth and turn away from the buzzer called habituation. Then if you take a soft rattle that we use with newborns and you know, we've always heard that the uterus is so noisy Brum Brum Brum Brum. Alright. Well, I wouldn't have thought they could even hear this rattle. But if you rattle it right next to the abdomen, the fetus takes her thumb out of her mouth opens her eyes and looks in the direction of the rattle. Out that then we do it with light. We use an operating room light in the line of vision the baby startles second time less startled third time. Then if you take a pin Point light and put it on the abdomen, they take the thumbs out of their mouths open their eyes and look in the direction of the light and at that point this mother of three boys said my God, she's the smartest baby I've got now, I think this is exactly what mothers are doing and fathers are doing all the time trying to figure out what that baby is like and when they tell you, you know, if I go to a concert my bet if it's a balk concert, my baby dance is one way if I go to a rock concert they dance another way. They're trying to get confirmation that this baby is what they think it is. This baby is a person so that's the first step now. The second step is the newborn baby and I would say that the newborn baby is so powerful in capturing parents for them that we ought to be using it, right. Left with every hospital ought to be using the opportunity to grab for the parent. They've got they're using the newborn baby. We have I don't know how many maybe 70 pieces of research with mothers and about 12 now with Father's all showing the same thing that if we demonstrate the newborn baby's behavior to them in the newborn period they not only attach more sensitively to their babies, but at one month are more sensitive to the babies behavioral cues at a year on all of these research with the father's the father is who's been shown his baby is significantly more attached to the baby, but also to the baby's mother about that and if the father's been involved in the first year, we have some research that shows that at the age of seven the child has a higher IQ does better School and has a better sense of humor. How about that for an outcome? So this is what father's need to remember now, all of this is showing the same thing there earlier we can start this process the better and then you go to the newborn and we have learned so much about the newborn baby when I started my research in the 50s. We thought babies couldn't see or hear remember that where'd it come from? You know who in the world dream that up every parent knows baby see her here and what they want is confirmation. Yeah, they're seeing and hearing me. So if we use what the baby brings to you, we could do fabulous things. For instance. One thing a newborn will do if you put his head here and is bottom here and he's looking up at the ceiling and you say (00:23:07) how you doing? Hi, come on, you can turn to my Is come on you can do it any new (00:23:13) barn stops moving its face Nets and it turns to your voice and when it finds your voice that leans forward like there you are and I found that my heart started racing after that. So I decided I'd use it and now I put a mother over there and I'm over here and we both talk and any newborn automatically turns the female voice you all know that and every time the baby turns to mother's voice. I've had a mother grab her baby and say, you know me already like it was a miracle now, I do it with father's eye. This was so powerful with mothers that I decided to do it the fathers and fortunately when we do it with Father's 80% of them choose their fathers voice rather than mine and the other 20% I tipped their heads so and then Every father does the same thing he grabs his baby says, you know me like a miracle. Well, if we want father's can't we do that, you know, it's so simple. So I'd like to show you now the first bit of film if we could have that is of a two-day-old baby and a few just a few there about six behaviors out of 26 that we have right at our beck and call to capture parents and to demonstrate the competence of the newborn baby. And this will be a two-day-old baby at the Boston hospital for women. And he's in my arms and she's got her hands in her mouth looking confident and relaxed and you can see how confident that makes me. Look now. I do a reflex called the placing reflex because I know if I do this she walk for me later, and I've never shown a new parent their baby walking that didn't nearly faint with pleasure. fathers even grab for their own biceps if their sons walk Now look at Sarah, you know, she takes my voice uses it to keep herself under control and because she got herself under control. She'll do anything I ask her to do She'll follow this (00:25:59) rattle (00:26:05) two days old. She'll follow my face and my voice And watch her face as she follows the human face and how rich and complex. It (00:26:21) is (00:26:28) now look at her face with an object how flat it is now parents take that very slight difference personally think the babies responding to their face with behavior because their (00:26:41) parents (00:26:48) Now any newborn predictably will pick up its head look around the room Mal their fists and then put her little head right down in the corner of your neck. Can't you feel it yourself? Hope none of your nursing. I've had mothers Mother's let down milk. (00:27:14) Thank (00:27:15) you. Well, you can see how Sarah does her job of trying to capture people to her and how powerful that behavior is. Sure. Every one of you would like to hold Sarah wouldn't I do and in the next seven days Sarah will learn her mother smell if you pair breast pads, she'll choose their mothers breasts Pat each time. If you give her a choice between her mother's voice and another woman's voice. She'll choose her mother's voice each time and by ten day, she'll choose her mother's silent face from any other woman silent face in 10 days think of the learning that that two notes and if her father's been involved in the first two weeks by 14 days, she'll choose her father's voice and face over any other mail. How about that now Sarah and other words will be learning her job and her cues. (00:28:21) Early (00:28:22) The Marvelous thing is that she'll show you she's learned it by six weeks of age if we put Sarah in a baby chair and ask the parents to go in and play with her. This is some research actually. This is the research that got the parental leave Bill started if we asked to go in and play with her we can tell you by watching a finger or a toe whether it's the mother father or if we send a stranger in we don't even need to see who the adult is. We can tell you by the finger or toe or mouth or eyes or even heart rate. And the reason is this that whenever you send a mother and to play with her baby, she always does the same thing. She goes in sits down gently behind in front of the baby then grabs for the baby's buttocks and leans over the new small baby and makes a sort of envelope with Face and her voice and start (00:29:23) saying hi Sarah. How are you? (00:29:27) Can you talk to me and Sarah go and she'll say that's right. Oh, that's rough. Give me another that's right Sarah. I'll do three of them and the mother will do three and then they quit. Well, if you watch her fingers and our toes they going like (00:29:45) this one, two, (00:29:49) three, very smooth very slow going out coming back going out coming back her mouth eyes going like this her heart rate. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom boom with the mother. So there's no guessing to it. We know father's always behave differently in our experience father's new fathers go in sit down in front of Sara lean back and start poking and they poke from the bottom to the top when Get to the top Sarah go they start again boom boom boom bum bum bum bum bum bum bum three times. So everything about Sarah with their father will be jerky. We call it a pounce look it is absolutely predictable and heart rate is going boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom boom. So, you know Sarah knows and with a stranger it's unpredictable and the unpredictability of it makes it clear. It's a stranger. Well, if it's that clear to Sarah and she makes it that clear back to each of these parents can't we rely on that can't we enhance that as a way of keeping parents feeling that's important. I do it in my office when a parent is sitting there talking to me and getting involved. I watch the baby for the right time and then I sort of dropped the conversation a little bit and always the mother looks down there baby and says how you doing in the baby girl, you know fingers and toes and I say look how she knows you every part of her body is responding. You and when the father takes the baby from the mother, he always sits back how you do it kid the baby and then I point out to him. Now. That's a way for my money of keeping people feeling. What I'm doing is critical because I think those responses are what begin to make a baby feel everything I do is critical. I have a decent self-image and I would think this was very easy to do and very easy to pass on now. I'd like to show you what a baby two months old and the mother two months old have learned from each other as you watch this next bit of film watch for two things how much they play this rhythm of getting excited and then coming down and getting excited then coming down they get into a homeostatic curve and the other thing is imitation watch how clear the imitation between the baby. And the parent are can we have the next bit of film? This will be an 8 week old baby and the mother who have learned a lot about each (00:32:47) other. (00:32:53) And this is a typical Paradigm. We've done research (00:32:56) with. (00:33:05) He's a very active baby. But (00:33:09) what? (00:33:16) Now who's imitating who? And now he'll turn her off and she turns off and they let up then they come back together to get excited again. And then we asked her to leave and to come back in a minute and violate this not give back any of this to the baby. (00:33:50) And don't talk to me. (00:34:00) It takes him 11 seconds to realize that she's not responding the way he expects and this baby cannot give up. He will try 15 different ways to try to capture his mother. He doesn't believe he can't get her. The only thing he doesn't rise trying to fall out of the chair that would get her but everything else he tries. Look how hard it is on her. And now we let them come back together in a normal way and he says where the hell have you been. And then he punishes their interns are off a little bit. Then he looks back at a look at those eyes. See those little dies. It's a turn it's okay. It was hell while it lasted but it's okay now where you can turn off the film now, thank you and I hope you can see how powerful this Paradigm is. We've been using it with depressed mothers and if we use it with a mother who's depressed what happens is that when the she comes in with the still face her baby doesn't expect anything. So after three tries gives up 15 tries verses 3, and the other thing we're finding which is very interesting is there's a sex Difference by three months little girls give up and put the thumbs in the mouth turn their eyes away and give up little boys get They start fighting and have angry behavior at three months. Now tie that into our violent society and wonder where the on log of violence starts way back here. So I'm just pointing this out to you because to me this represents all that. We've got ready to go in both parent and baby if we gave them an envelope to to produce this in if we as a society go on violating the opportunities like this, we are going to continue to get just what we're getting and we can do this across class we can do this across across diversity and we better get on with the job. Well, I don't mean to scare you but I do mean to point out that this can be done. I'll be talking tomorrow about a new paradigm that we've developed a nerd working on at Harvard called touch points in which we know the X and a child's development when parents need us and when the if we're there and can give them information. We can keep it from being a traumatic time a difficult time and make it a positive time and touchpoints there six of them in the first year three in the second two and each year after that and my theory is that if we could be there for inner-city families at each of those times and give them back something that mattered to them their child's development. We might reach out for people and keep them coming. We've been doing this with substance abusing mothers and using their baby as a goal and the Tigers Which points is opportunities for outreach we have had amazing success not only in the baby's recovery, but in the mothers recovering so we know we can do it and the touch points go something like this. No developmental line and a baby motor cognitive emotional development goes straight up. He goes in bursts of learning and then leveling off in consolidating what they've just learned then another burst then leveling off and each each developmental line is sort of all on its own economically one is to sort of takes precedent and the other lays back and then another one will take precedence. So it gives us an opportunity to break down learning and infancy into these developmental lines, but the wonderful thing from our standpoint, is that just before each burst. Which cost everybody in the family so much. I'll remind you of one burst just are so you get the idea remember a one-year-old learning to walk there up and down up and down every three to four hours screaming. I'm hanging on to the crib acting like they can't get back down again. Remember that and when you turn your back on them in the daytime they scream at you absolutely exhausting getting a child learning to walk. Well the cost of that spurt in the motor to area is preceded by a period in which you can predict their disorganizing falling apart just before they take a burst and there are six of these just before each new learning process in a child predictable and these times are fascinating times because they the child falls back does something they've just given up Parent thinks oh my gosh. What's he wetting the bed for? What's he sucking his thumb? What's he lying or stealing? What's he progressing? Like he didn't used to and he's a bottle every three hours all of these things that go along with a child's regression if they understood it as a period of regression to reorganize to take the spurt. Then I think each spurt would become the parent spurt as well as the child's and I would like to reach out for parents get them together in a community around each of these regressive points. Let them share experiences share Solutions and keep young parents together that way with the same value systems. We could start in pregnancy like the childbirth education's get to emit with the newborn and when you show them all this wonderful behavior in the newborn and knew you had them in your pocket, then you could say remember your Friends that you were with and pregnancy their babies are born to don't you wonder if their baby is better at this than yours wouldn't you like to come over and meet him again and talk it over and let's get together just before colleague begins, you know, we know 85 percent of kids are going to start at three weeks and fuss every evening for the first three months don't we don't you know that and if everybody knows it and if it's a predictable part of the day when I get people together and let him get a solution they can share and instead of getting like this are driving their kids over rough roads or turning on that putting them on the washing machine or any of the other Solutions. Maybe they can learn this is a normal part of the day. It's a time when a immature nervous system is built up just so much and has to blow and then they can tolerate it if By the else is going through the same thing. So this would be the approach I would like to do now as I say there are six of these in the first year for will prevent sleep issues 3 will prevent feeding issues in the first year and four of these will prevent toilet training problems in the first two years. So I know this works as many of you have that book touch points. I know it works for middle and working class families. I don't yet know whether we can make it work across to enter City families, but I can't believe we can if we use the baby as our go so with that let me finish with a Mayan Indian quote that I love. I used to work with the Mayan Indians in southern Mexico right next to the Guatemalan border. These people are still raising their babies like they did in the 15th century and there. Wonderful group of people still well-fed have done not Fallen apart, like many of the Indians in our country are even the ones in the lowlands of Mexico and they always have the most wonderful things. They say for in the newborn baby is the future of our world a mother should hold that baby clothes. So she knows the world is hers a father should take that baby to the highest hill and show that baby. How wide and wonderful. His world is. Thank you. (00:43:22) My name is Sally and dr. Brazelton. I'm not a mother of a child. I have animals instead, but my question is on discipline disciplining children and especially with the spanking issue which is coming up so much in the news and what is abusive and not abusive. I like to hear you talk on abuse (00:43:40) person right Love to You may wish I didn't but discipline. First of all is discipline is the second most important thing. We give a child as a parent at love comes first, but discipline comes very close to it and it's terribly critical if we don't discipline kids. They're lost. We tried in the 50s Not to (00:44:02) discipline kids. They were frantic. (00:44:04) They were running into walls trying to get somebody to say stop. And so I know from that experience that they needed the discipline is not punishment discipline is (00:44:17) Cheering (00:44:17) and the go for discipline is to teach the child how to stop himself at a certain point and that takes a long long time maybe all their lives but certainly the first few years. And so what you do each time is not that critical as long as it's in that line of turning it back to them eventually and saying I expect you to learn to stop yourself at a certain point and this is what I do after each disciplinary action now hitting a child is something very different. It may have been alright in past Generations. It is not okay now because we live in a violent society and they see nothing but violence on (00:45:02) television if we join by (00:45:06) hitting them we are saying to him I believe in violence as a way of settling issues. Is that what we want to say? I don't think so and I think kids do To learn to protect themselves. I don't have anything against Judo and all the things that help them learn how to manage themselves in a in a competitive situation, but I don't think we ought to play into it and I think hitting them is no good. I would suggest things like time out holding them using their room if you need to to restrict them, but very quickly as soon as you break the cycle, that's just to break the cycle you go to him sit down with them pick them up and say I love you. I just don't like what you do and you can't do it every time you do it. I got to stop you until you can stop yourself. Then we're through and that's where I'd (00:45:58) go. Hi. My name is Andy and I have a two-year-old son at home and another one on the way and that and have a wonderful marriage (00:46:06) great. Well, thank you. I love that kind of (00:46:09) an at-home mom. And so I know my son Dalton is very used to me being with him all the time and I'm just want to hear what you have to say about how we go about making sure. It doesn't feel rejected when the new baby comes and how to make Church sure he feels just as love then as he does now, (00:46:24) I guess I'd talk about the baby, you know a little bit during pregnancy, but wait till toward the end because I had one little boy whose mother and father were both psychiatrist and they talked about the baby incessantly (00:46:36) and he finally (00:46:37) said babyís. Maybe what is (00:46:39) it? He couldn't stand to hear about it any longer. So I'd wait took late and then talk (00:46:45) about how it's going to be a separation. You're going to the hospital but Daddy I guess you are our daddy and grandma or whoever is going to be there will be there for him and be sure he knows them and you know, and then I would also bring him home something very special and be (00:47:03) sure it's something he can (00:47:04) nurture while you're nurturing your baby. (00:47:07) Not that it'll work but it's worth doing and well when you are nursing the baby bring him up and give him (00:47:14) his special nurturing let him, you know evening. Try the breast even or whatever but don't shove him out openly in the beginning trouble is you will shove him out along the way. It's automatic that when you get a new baby and make the older one grow up, even though he's still a baby. (00:47:31) So try to resist that and then as they as they get bigger (00:47:38) just expect sibling rivalry. It's an inevitable part. It's the hair no matter (00:47:43) what but it also is evidence (00:47:47) of how to kids learning about each other rivalries one side of a coin and caring is the other side. So it's these to go very much together. So you can't really protecting what you can do is support him and let him know that you're there and what I always suggest all of you who are working or busier have more than one child is each. Are you even with one child each of you ought to have a Time on the weekend that you go off with that one that Child all alone. And you talk about it all week long. We're going to have our time this weekend when Mommy won't have the baby. She won't have anybody to worry about but you and we're going to do what you want. Of course. He'll never know what he wants to do. But you know, you said it out that way but talking about it all week really heightens it and makes it a very special time. So I'd suggest that (00:48:39) to thank you. Hi. Dr. My name is Joyce and I have a 20 month old and a 7 month old and my oldest one is biting and I weirder would send she bites the baby for no reason. I'm with a group of mothers here tonight who will attest to that. I have the biter in the group and (00:49:01) and and it is (00:49:03) so frustrating. I we don't know what to do. We truly we've tried everything and I was wondering if you could maybe give me another thing to try. (00:49:13) No I did. Yeah. I'll say (00:49:17) lay off you're doing too much already your heightening that that normal developmental process all kids go through a period of biting and it's exploratory at first as you note or the end of the first year the early second year and then they begin to bite you and of course you react and that sets off more biting but then when it transfers to other kids it gets out of hand because every other mother hates your kid and they won't come near you (00:49:49) and you feel rejected. So (00:49:51) what are you do you want to bite him back? Well, that doesn't work. So understand it first that it is a normal process. And of course with a new baby right on top of him like that he would turn to something like that. So I would certainly, you know, stop him from doing it and not leave the baby where he can be she can be bitten, but I've tried not to reinforce it. Every time you try to do something you reinforcing it. So what I would do is try to make it safe so he can't really hurt anybody else and get in trouble and then talk to him about it. Of course when he does do it and say I'm sorry, but I don't like that and walk away. In other words. It's called negative reinforcement just not do too much about it, but mainly don't get him in situations where he gets overloaded or heightened because you know, he's going to bite. And then if you can find another biter just his age put them (00:50:53) together works like a charm that don't tell the other mother I suggested these but (00:51:05) it is is one of the few ways. I know but negative reinforcement it will go if you aren't heightening it all the time, but I suspect you are right now so try to pull back (00:51:17) one mother suggested made a suggestion to me the (00:51:19) other night. She said she bought one of these dog bones, you know, these rubber dog bones and tied it around her child's neck. And so every time he wanted to bite he could pick this up and chew on the road. I'm not sure whether I recommend that or (00:51:33) not