RAISING GOOD HUMANSHOSTED BYDEAR MEDIA, ALIZA PRESSMAN
As a parent, do you ever wish someone could just whisper some realistic and trustworthy support in your ear? And not make you feel awful for not having all the answers? Well, that’s what I’m here for.
I'm Dr. Aliza Pressman, developmental psychologist, parent educator, asst. clinical professor, and co-founder of both Mount Sinai Parenting Center and SeedlingsGroup. And I'm a mom... trying to raise two good humans myself, so I'm in this with you!
In each episode, we'll go deep (but brief) with both experts and parents to share the most effective approaches and tools and talk about the important bigger picture of raising good humans. My goal is to make your parenting journey less overwhelming and a lot more joyful!
Please join me every Friday for new episodes of Raising Good Humans.
So I didn't have information in my view or consider asking about what was to come. And it just wasn't a conversation. And I have a very open family and, yes, so much so much education. And so it was just surprising. And we talked about everything, but just this never came up. Didn't talk about it with my sister. Didn't think I was old enough, didn't even just nothing. And then certain symptoms started to occur, that just didn't seem obvious to me. Mhmm. And in retrospect, they were super obvious. And so estrogen was one of the big things that, like, I did not understand the superpower of estrogen. Yeah. I don't think I didn't either really. I wasn't taught to me. This is something I learned post medical school residency training. Like, once I started digging in, to the literature? Like, why are women feeling this way? Why are we? They're just being dismissed. Why are so many seeing multiple specialists for multiple problems yet? Really what's going on as lack of estrogen. Like, it took me going back to school basically to realize estrogen is a superpower, and it is a powerful anti inflammatory hormone that affects the brain, the bones, the lungs, kidneys, the gut, you know, our muscular skeletal system, our general urinary system, nothing is left unscathed, how we process metabolites, your cholesterol, your insulin resistance. You know, what I see in my clinic is besides the aches and pains and the things that are acutely affecting your life, your cholesterol is going up. I mean, people's heads are gonna explode. I promise you when they hear this because this has happened to them. Cholesterol goes up across the menopause transition with no changes in diet and exercise, just losing your estrogen. Wow. Your insulin resistance. It's worse. Just, you know, if your a one c has all of a sudden popped up out of nowhere and you
The latter being that which has shown in study after study to be the most effective. Approaching discipline with the intention to teach will set a more effective tone than approaching it with the feeling of imposing punishment. Leading with punishment sometimes makes us feel temporarily in charge, but it doesn't actually serve us or our children. Luckily for all of us, there is a large space between indulgence and punishment, and that space includes understanding, curiosity, really serious guardrails, room for self compassion, and repair. This is about how you can create that space. So first, remember what we've talked about, pause to respond with balance. So you're with your child at a neighborhood joint meeting up with a friend or two with their children in tow. You've been looking forward to coffee and a conversation with the latest book club reading or whatever's genes are gonna fall out of fashion for good and you figure the kids will entertain each other. So you picked a spot with a little play area in the back complete with a wooden train set and a few headless barbies. You order your drink, pastry, you find a table and you make room for others. That's exactly when it happens. Your child decides to throw themselves on the dirty floor and have a meltdown. There's no warning, but either way, you feel partly embarrassed, partly annoyed. And in the moment, you have no idea what to do. So whether your child is 2a half and having a tantrum or a disengaged tween checked out on their phone during family dinner, side note, definitely encourage no phones at dinner, including your own. The consistent feature here is more than just kids behaving badly. It's the relentless challenge we all face as parents trying to answer the question, what is my job here? In any moment when you feel your nervous system kicking in,
Stick solution to overcomplicate its skin care routines because there's an effective easy to use product line, there are streamlined routines, so busy moms for example, can care for their skin on their own time. I have been using what I find to be the coolest product. It's the advanced retinol body butter. I've been using it for weeks. I love that I can get the phenomenal results of retinol. If you use retinol on your face, then you know how fantastic it is on your skin. And now, there's a product where you can put it all over your body. I cannot say enough about this. It's so awesome. Versed offers high quality skin safe retinol for face and eyes as well, but the body one, I just cannot say enough about. It's also a fraction of the cost of so many high end brands. And Verst is excited to offer Raising Good Humans listeners an exclusive 15% discount on your first order only for a limited time, so discover versed@versedskin.comoratargetand versedskin.com/humans. So find Burst in store at Target or visit burstskin.com slash humans, and don't forget to use the code humans 15 at checkout for 15% off your purchase. That's verzedskin.com/humans. You all know how much I love KiwiCo because KiwiCo delivers serious fun learning for all kids of all ages. Our hands on projects and activities comes each month. You receive these fun crates and packages. They have engaging hands on activities. And what I love most about KiwiCo is that these boxes kind of come in all sorts of do it yourself exciting hands on art concept technology.
Light bulbs you're gonna buy and design wears. And so it seems quite innocent and something that you absolutely could be allowing your kids to use without even thinking they're participating in something harmful. Yeah. And it's such a good point you make because it's not just about TikTok. TikTok right now has got a lot of attention, in part because it's owned by a Chinese company, in part because there's some focus on it, because of its role the role that it's playing in growing antisemitism. But the truth is that all platforms have got really serious harms that they can cause to kids. In you know, Instagram is is is another, as you mentioned. YouTube is the single most popular platform with young people. And that can have that hosts a ton of harmful content, Pinterest and others. And that's why it's really important to have conversations with kids that are ongoing and permanent because you don't want your kids to be to be evasive with you. You don't want them to be hiding their behavior, and you need to take all the shame out of it. It's very, very clear. The algorithms, they do what they want to do. They don't give your kids what they already want. They give your kids what they want them to want. And, you know, if we can see that on one platform within 2 and a half minutes without in it any intervention, they're sending self harm content. That's not something any child asks for. It's something that's sent to them. And it's about having shame free conversations in which we're asking kids to to to tell us what they're what they're seeing. You know, it's a symmetrical conversation. They're teaching us about what they're seeing online, about what context for it and to also understand, is this normal? Is it abnormal? Is it dangerous? Is it not dangerous? Should should kids be cognizant of other sort of mitigating factors when they're consuming this kind of content? So that we're able to contextualize the information and learning that they're getting from these platforms. Realistically, it's near impossible to stop kids from accessing platforms ever. And realistically as well, most kids and most parents will have
And I can make my own decision about it because I have that fluency. So I can say 70% of that was great if you are aware of the 30% that was actually bordering on potentially harmful, like certain comments about mental health and certain comments about Mhmm. Treatment, like, for kids who are suffering. Like, I I was like, that's straight up irresponsible and inaccurate. So I also was thinking, oh my god. How much in the parenting space must be so frightening for parents who are like, I don't how could I possibly have critical thinking about this? Of course, if this is packaged in a way that sells this idea well enough, who am I to not believe it? But, like, for me, I have access to a little bit more information. So, you know, if we were if I were listening to that same podcast but the topic was tulips, I would be like, I guess that's true about tulips. So I will say I listened to that podcast, and I had a really similar takeaway to you. And I am by no means an expert in this field, But I thought, wow. There's a lot of really solid points being made here about, you know, how we've sort of overcatered to our kids and their feelings so much recently, and it's raising a group of kids who just are not resilient and can't be independent out in the world and that kind of thing. And I think there is a lot to that. Now what I found also at the end of that podcast, I was like, this is a very extreme point of view. And that if you are looking at any topic in the world ever, you should maybe take it all with a grain of salt and be able to discern that if somebody is talking about something like a book that they've written or whatever, they might have a very extreme take on that in order to perpetuate their point and perpetuate, like, the idea that they're trying to get it out to the
