So who is right, mum or dad?

Our most significant discovery as a couple struggling to agree on how to parent our children was the realisation that it was absurd to rely solely on our ‘instincts’ to tell us how to parent together successfully. Sure we  had  ‘gut reactions’ or even hunches as to how to raise our children, but the reality was that these were largely informed by a ‘reflex parenting style’, a set of personal prejudices about child raising based on our own ‘parented’ experiences. As is often the case our individual inherited parenting style was often in conflict with our spouse’s, in our case more overprotecting and permissive inclinations (Carole) versus more authoritarian (Nadim). Mislabelling these reflexes ‘instincts’ was not helpful, inevitably leading to arguments about who was in the  right and who in the wrong.

Why are our instincts often misleading?

In the highly acclaimed book ‘Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children’ by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, the authors draw on years of research to explain why the traditional reliance on instinct is unrealistic and unhelpful:
“According to lore, the maternity instinct is innate, … as a mother, you will know what to do and you will continue knowing for the next eighteen years. The reality is that the actual instinct – the biological drive that kicks in – is the fierce impulse to nurture and protect’s one child. Neuroscientists have even located the exact neural network in the brain where impulse fires. Expecting parents can rely on this impulse kicking in – but as for how best to nurture, they have to figure it out. In other words, our instincts are so off base because they are not actually instincts. … After three years of investigation behind us, we discovered that parents’ reactions were polluted by a hodgepodge of wishful thinking, moralistic biases, contagious fads, personal history, and old (disproven) psychology, … all at the expense of common sense”.

Why empirical evidence is more useful than instincts

Of course every child is an individual and has his own temperament, which is why at the heart of all good parenting lies the need to observe and listen to our children in order to understand their unique set of needs. However, once parents are made aware of the latest research in child development and discover simple and effective tools that help them address their child’s specific needs, they realise that leaving it all down to instinct is inappropriate.

Compare for example the traditional typical instinctual/ reflex response to a child who has hurt themselves: “Don’t worry, it’s not that bad”. Whilst this phrase might seem reassuring to your child, leading research studies show that children generally feel genuinely discounted, even confused, when they hear us overriding their feelings in this way.  On the other hand, if we take the time to acknowledge their feelings before we reassure them, children feel reassured and are therefore readier for recovery. Similarly, the conventionally wisdom regarding praise, [link to praise] has lead parents to trust their ‘instinct’ to use praise wherever possible to bolster their child’s self belief. For surely feeling cherished = feeling confident? Yet the (perhaps counter intuitive) child development evidence consistently shows that when children experience blanket, or  ‘over’ praise they become afraid of failure, ironically performing worse than children who are praised for their efforts rather than their existence.

The easy way to acquire the knowledge to parent successfully

Understanding the way that our children think, what they hear and how they incorporate it into their understanding of themselves and the world around them, provides the key to “better” parenting. Yet given our ‘instinct’s ability to trick us into making the wrong decision, we need to learn to override our gut reactions through acquiring practical alternatives based on science and not hunches. Which is why here at Best of Parenting we have studied the hard scientific evidence as to what really works and converted it in to easy to use tools to equip you to meet everyday parenting challenges from a position of understanding rather than instinct.See our website, free app, parenting courses and our forthcoming book for further guidance.