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Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the

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Speaker 1: time poor parent who just wants answers.

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Speaker 2: Now doing the only strategies our kids are doing while

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Speaker 2: they're doing their chores is how they can get out

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Speaker 2: of them or get them done as fast as possible.

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Speaker 3: That might be executive function as well.

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Speaker 1: And now here's the stars of our show, my Mum

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Speaker 1: and dad Kylie.

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Speaker 3: We have a running joke that this particular episode of

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Speaker 3: the podcast is the one that you like the least,

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Speaker 3: but I've received feedback from the Happy Families Premium members

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Speaker 3: group on Facebook that it just happens to be one

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Speaker 3: of the more popular ones among our listeners. How do

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Speaker 3: you feel about that?

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Speaker 2: I don't know what to say to that. I just

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Speaker 2: I don't know what to say to that.

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Speaker 3: So we're going to do it. We're going to keep

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Speaker 3: doing it once a month. The Doctor's Desk. The idea

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Speaker 3: for those of you who are knew to the podcast

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Speaker 3: with the Doctor's Desk episodes is I come through the

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Speaker 3: letters research that has appeared, things to do with parenting,

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Speaker 3: things to do with family, things to do with wellbeing children,

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Speaker 3: even all on education, and essentially we play around with

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Speaker 3: what the science is discovering what the scientists, I should say,

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Speaker 3: the science doesn't discover anything. The science is not a

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Speaker 3: human it doesn't get to do the discovering. But scientists

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Speaker 3: are discovering stuff that I think is really relevant to

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Speaker 3: what it is to raise families and to be informed.

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Speaker 3: Now that that's established that this is such an important

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Speaker 3: podcast episode on the Happy Families Agenda. Every third Thursday

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Speaker 3: of the month, we get to talk about the doctor's desk.

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Speaker 3: We have three studies to play with today, Kylie, I

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Speaker 3: don't mind which one we do first. I know that

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Speaker 3: you're enthusiastic about all three of them. Where would you

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Speaker 3: like to start?

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Speaker 2: I am actually quite curious about the school based mindfulness training.

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Speaker 2: Oh yes, and the implications that it has on our children.

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Speaker 3: Mindfulness has kind of been the buzzword in well being

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Speaker 3: for maybe a decade, maybe a touch more than that. Now.

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Speaker 3: People have been very excited about mindfulness. A few times

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Speaker 3: on the podcast, I've highlighted that the research evidence isn't

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Speaker 3: as strong as the mindfulness apps and the mindfulness blogs

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Speaker 3: and the mindfulness gurus would tell us. Now, if mindfulness

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Speaker 3: works for you, I'm not here to what's the phrase

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Speaker 3: that I'm looking for to squash your pumpkin. That's very

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Speaker 3: Halloween of you, squash pumpkin? Where did you get that from?

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Speaker 3: It's Halloween, I've got pumpkins in my head. I was

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Speaker 3: gonna say rain on your parade, but that's that's too boring.

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Speaker 3: There's another phrase that I'm looking for, But whatever it is,

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Speaker 3: I don't want to I don't want to ruin your

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Speaker 3: life by saying mindfulness isn't everything that everyone's So you're.

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Speaker 2: Specifically talking to me right now because I've actually found

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Speaker 2: that mindfulness practices has been a huge benefit to me.

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Speaker 3: Great, and if it's a benefit to you, there is

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Speaker 3: research that says that it is a benefit to some people.

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Speaker 3: And so if it works for you, keep doing it.

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Speaker 3: But if you one of those people like me who

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Speaker 3: tries to be mindful and about three seconds later says

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Speaker 3: this says just not working, It's okay. There's a whole

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Speaker 3: lot of research.

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Speaker 2: Says a labe. When we could attach to you.

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Speaker 3: Anyway, let me tell you about this study twenty researchers

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Speaker 3: from all over the UK and scific, specifically at Oxford University,

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Speaker 3: the Oxford Department of Psychiatry. So we're talking about prestige

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Speaker 3: scrip of scientists who are very, very thoughtful and considered scientists,

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Speaker 3: including one of my favorite researchers, Sarah Jane Blakemore, a

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Speaker 3: neuropsych What this research looked at was school based mindfulness

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Speaker 3: training in early adolescents. And essentially they've run this training

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Speaker 3: with eight thousand, three hundred and seventy six eleven to

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Speaker 3: thirteen year olds.

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Speaker 2: So it's not a small study. This is a large

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Speaker 2: group of children.

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Speaker 3: It really is. And the reason that this matters is because, well,

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Speaker 3: number one, large studies work, but number two, the caliber

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Speaker 3: of the scientists involved in this study. This is a

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Speaker 3: carefully built study done the right way with the right researchers.

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Speaker 3: They've done all the pre approved work to make sure

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Speaker 3: that the study's done hypotheses, everything's done ahead of time,

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Speaker 3: so there's full transparency. Because psychology is studying from what's

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Speaker 3: called the replicability crisis. In other words, people have done

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Speaker 3: these studies. Everyone makes a big noise but and says, all,

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Speaker 3: my goodness, researchers have found this, and then no one

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Speaker 3: else can reproduce the study, which is a bit of

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Speaker 3: a challenge. It's not just psychology medicine, it's even had

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Speaker 3: some of these replicability challenges as well, I should say

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Speaker 3: that more slowly replicability challenges. And so anyway, what happens

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Speaker 3: with science now, really well done science is that good

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Speaker 3: scientists will pre register their studies. They'll tell everyone what

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Speaker 3: they're studying, who they're studying it with, what their hypotheses are,

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Speaker 3: what their methods are, and what they're expected outcomes are.

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Speaker 3: And then we get to marry up what their pre

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Speaker 3: registration details were with what came after. This is a

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Speaker 3: way of improving the quality of the scientific work that's

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Speaker 3: being done and reducing the likelihood of replicability challenges, but

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Speaker 3: also reducing the likelihood of scientific fraud and bizarre findings

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Speaker 3: that no one else can explain and no one else

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Speaker 3: can reproduce. Mindfulness, is that somebody stealing your idea?

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Speaker 2: Though?

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Speaker 3: The great thing about science is it takes a long

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Speaker 3: time to do so. By the time you get to

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Speaker 3: the point that you're ready to pre register, you're pretty

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Speaker 3: much about to run the experiment. The rest of it's

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Speaker 3: already done. It takes a long time to get all

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Speaker 3: this through. So it's been done, well, that's all I'm

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Speaker 3: trying to say. It's been done well, but mindfulness research

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Speaker 3: there are questions around some of the replicability issues in

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Speaker 3: this research. So Sarah Jane Blakemore and a range of

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Speaker 3: her nineteen of her colleagues from Oxford have all sat

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Speaker 3: down with eighty three hundred and seventy six students aged

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Speaker 3: eleven to thirteen who are participating in a randomized study

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Speaker 3: looking at whether or not a school based mindfulness training

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Speaker 3: program actually helps. And they look specifically at whether or

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Speaker 3: not it helps with depression, social emotional, behavioral functioning, and

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Speaker 3: well being. And they looked at this these measures at

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Speaker 3: baseline before there'd been in the intervention. Then they also

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Speaker 3: did a pre intervention look. So what they're essentially doing

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Speaker 3: is ays saying, Okay, we're measuring it here, but now

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Speaker 3: we're going to measure it again before anyone does anything,

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Speaker 3: and then we're going to measure after the intervention, and

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Speaker 3: then we're going to measure again a year down the track.

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Speaker 3: So we're talking longitudinal research with multiple measures looking at

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Speaker 3: everything that's going on here. And what they essentially found

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Speaker 3: was that a school based mindfulness training versus teaching as

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Speaker 3: us without the mindful of stuff, just regular teaching, resulted

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Speaker 3: in worse scores on risk of depression and well being

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Speaker 3: in students at risk of mental health problems at both

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Speaker 3: the post intervention phase and the one year follow up phase. Now,

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Speaker 3: the good news here is that the differences were small

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Speaker 3: and they were not clinically relevant. But what we do

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Speaker 3: need to worry about is that sometimes when we step

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Speaker 3: into an environment and we start running these interventions, we say, oh,

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Speaker 3: mindfulness is good for everyone, and we should just be

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Speaker 3: getting everyone to be more mindful. It actually isn't There

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Speaker 3: are some people, particularly those who are at risk of

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Speaker 3: having mental health challenges, who may go in exactly the

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Speaker 3: obsite direction to what we want here. This finding, I

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Speaker 3: think is a really important one to highlight just how

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Speaker 3: important it is that we move carefully when we're playing

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Speaker 3: around with interventions, especially when we look at whole of

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Speaker 3: population interventions. Rolling something out across an entire school may

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Speaker 3: not be in every student's best interest. In fact, it

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Speaker 3: could be deleterious for some.

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Speaker 2: Since COVID, we've seen a massive increase in mental illness

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Speaker 2: in society in general, and especially in our kids. And

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Speaker 2: when you listen to a study like this, I wonder

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Speaker 2: if part of that decrease in the findings that they

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Speaker 2: had after twelve months is a result of the labeling

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Speaker 2: process that goes on as we try to educate our

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Speaker 2: kids on what mental health looks like and what mental

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Speaker 2: illness looks like.

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Speaker 3: So anyway, that's that's that first study. We've probably talk

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Speaker 3: so much.

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Speaker 2: I need to get onto number two. Seriously.

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Speaker 3: Want to talk about.

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Speaker 2: There's another study that talks about the fact that the

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Speaker 2: more chores children get involved in, it's been linked to

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Speaker 2: better executive function. Great, what is executive function? Exactly?

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Speaker 3: Okay, so executive function, because I know.

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Speaker 2: That I'm really good at mopping the floor, but I

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Speaker 2: don't know if that means that I have a great

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Speaker 2: executive functions.

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Speaker 3: Well, well, you're not a child either. So the part

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Speaker 3: of your brain above your eyes, behind your forehead is

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Speaker 3: called the prefrontal quartet. That's where most of our executive

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Speaker 3: function occurs. Exactly.

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Speaker 2: I don't think anything happens behind my eyes.

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Speaker 3: Now above your eyes, not behind your eyes, behind your forehead.

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Speaker 3: So the idea of an executive is that it does

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Speaker 3: the planning, the regulating, the policy making, the strategizing. That's

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Speaker 3: what an executive does in a business, and in your brain,

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Speaker 3: the executive the prefront of cortex that does all of

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Speaker 3: your regulating, you're organizing thinking things through inhibiting planning. Those

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Speaker 3: are the kinds of things that we're talking about with

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Speaker 3: executive function.

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Speaker 2: I think the only strategies our kids are doing while

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Speaker 2: they're doing their chores is how they can get out

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Speaker 2: of them or get them done as fast as possible.

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Speaker 3: That might be executive function as well. But essentially two

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Speaker 3: hundred and seven Australian kids were involved in this. It

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Speaker 3: was an Ossie study that was published in Occupational Therapy

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Speaker 3: Australia and these two hundred and seven families participated. Parents

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Speaker 3: and guardians of two hundred and seven kids aged five

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Speaker 3: through to thirteen were asked to complete a whole lot

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Speaker 3: of parent report questionnaires on the degree to which their

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Speaker 3: kids engage in household chores and how well they use

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Speaker 3: their brains executive function. And the results essentially showed that

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Speaker 3: engagement in what were called self care chores, things like

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Speaker 3: making themselves a meal and family care chores like making

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Speaker 3: someone else a meal or tiding up because the kitchen's

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Speaker 3: a mess, significantly predicted working memory and inhibition. And that

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Speaker 3: was after looking at the age the maturity experience of

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Speaker 3: the child, the gender of the child, and whether or

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Speaker 3: not there was or was not a disability or any

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Speaker 3: additional needs with child. Also thought this was interesting for

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Speaker 3: families with a pet, there was no significant relationship between

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Speaker 3: engagement in pet care chores and executive function skills.

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Speaker 2: I'm off the hook. No more dogs than me.

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Speaker 3: That's it. I think we're done with pets. But this

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Speaker 3: is a really really interesting study set. It's not it's

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Speaker 3: not an experimental study. It's a cross section or a

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Speaker 3: correlational study. And when we look at correlations, what we're

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Speaker 3: saying is that this thing happens and that thing happens

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Speaker 3: at the same time. So what the researchers are at

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Speaker 3: pains to highlight here, Kylie, is that the kids who

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Speaker 3: are doing the chores appear to have better executive functions.

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Speaker 3: But we don't know if it's the chores that are

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Speaker 3: helping the kids to have better executive functioning in the brain,

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Speaker 3: or if it's the kids that have got better executive

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Speaker 3: functioning in the brain that are more likely to do

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Speaker 3: their chores. That makes sense, so it could be that

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Speaker 3: if you see your kids and they're really responsible, they're

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Speaker 3: good at inhibiting they're thoughtful, they're willing to do some

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Speaker 3: work around the house. You actually load them up on

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Speaker 3: chores because their executive function is on fire. It may

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Speaker 3: not be that the chores are making them better with

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Speaker 3: their executive functioning. I think realistically it's probably a bit

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Speaker 3: of both. But I thought that was a really interesting

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Speaker 3: study and just a reminder for parents that it's okay

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Speaker 3: to us the kids to do chores, but when you

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Speaker 3: do that, make sure that you provide them with the

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Speaker 3: scaffolding they need, give them the support, sit there and

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Speaker 3: let them watch you do it, then do it with them,

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Speaker 3: then stand by and supervise while they're doing it, and

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Speaker 3: then finally, when they're able to do it on their own,

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Speaker 3: step away and let them do it like that, and be.

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Speaker 2: Prepared to be told that you're the worst parent in

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Speaker 2: the world.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and lots of times I can't and it's too

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Speaker 3: hard and you're unfair.

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Speaker 2: Well, the last study today is that there is actually

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Speaker 2: no evidence that siblings gender affect personality.

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Speaker 3: I love these research pieces, So things that look at

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Speaker 3: birth order, things that look at gender and personality, all

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Speaker 3: these kinds of things really delight me every time I

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Speaker 3: come across them, because They essentially say stop looking for

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Speaker 3: things that aren't there. And the data again is saying

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Speaker 3: stop looking for something that's not there. When it comes

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Speaker 3: to birth order, it really is not particularly predictive of anything.

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Speaker 3: This idea that firstborns are this and second borns are

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Speaker 3: that and third borns or whatever, the research just doesn't

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Speaker 3: support it. It's the same when we look at things

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Speaker 3: like this one and that is like you said, does

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Speaker 3: the gender of your sibling affect your personality? So we've

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Speaker 3: got nine countries participate paiding in this study, twelve large

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Speaker 3: representative surveys with eighty five thousand, eight hundred and eighty

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Speaker 3: seven participants. When we're talking about a big study, we've

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Speaker 3: got the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Mexico, China,

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Speaker 3: and Indonesia in this study. So it's cross cultural. It's really, really,

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Speaker 3: really big. And essentially the researchers had to look at

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Speaker 3: the personality traits of the extent that kids can tolerate, risk,

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Speaker 3: their trust, their patients, where they think things that happen

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Speaker 3: to them come from is it inside me? Or is

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Speaker 3: it stuff happening in the environment. And the Big five

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Speaker 3: personality factors which are openness to new experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness,

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Speaker 3: and neuroticism.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so I would have thought a much more interesting

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Speaker 2: study would have been to see whether or not parents'

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Speaker 2: personalities actually impact children's as opposed to your siblings.

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Speaker 3: It's really interesting. I haven't found I haven't looked for

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Speaker 3: a study like that. I'd be curious to see whether

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Speaker 3: it exists. But certainly when it comes to birth or effects,

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Speaker 3: and now siblings gender and the impact that that has

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Speaker 3: on personality, the research is essentially found no meaningful causal

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Speaker 3: effects of the gender of the next younger sibling, and

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Speaker 3: no associations with the gender of the next older sibling.

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Speaker 3: Given the high statistical power and consistent results in the

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Speaker 3: overall sample, they say and the relevant subsamples, our results

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Speaker 3: suggest that siblings gender does not systematically affect personality. And

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Speaker 3: I just experience tells me that regardless of how many

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Speaker 3: siblings you've got, what age they are, whether they're close

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Speaker 3: to you in age, or whether they've got the same

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Speaker 3: gender or a different gender as you, your personality is

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Speaker 3: your personality.

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Speaker 2: We only have girls in our home, six of them

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Speaker 2: to play with, and the reality is each of them,

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Speaker 2: like literally, each of them is their own person totally.

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Speaker 2: They're not influenced by the person above them or below

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Speaker 2: them in any way, shape or form. We've got a

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Speaker 2: kid who actually couldn't care less what she wears and

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Speaker 2: matches her clothes and mismatches her clothes and just is

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Speaker 2: not concerned about that stuff at all. We've got another

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Speaker 2: kid who absolutely is very concerned about how she looks

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Speaker 2: and what she wears. We've got another kid who is

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Speaker 2: just so eclectic in her you know, kind of her music.

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Speaker 2: Tastes like they're all so different.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, they are, And I don't know why that surprises us,

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Speaker 3: because we're so different to our siblings.

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Speaker 2: I think, if anything, the more time you spend with people,

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Speaker 2: the more you become like them.

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Speaker 3: Sure I'd go with that. Yeah, you know.

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Speaker 2: So we talk about you become the average of the

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Speaker 2: five people you spend the most time with. And so

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Speaker 2: when you think about families, if you are close knit

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Speaker 2: and you spend lots of time together, then you are

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Speaker 2: going to take on some of the traits of those people.

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Speaker 2: But that happens over time and it's not a result

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Speaker 2: of gender.

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Speaker 3: We really hope that this doctor's desk episode has been delightful, Hylie.

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Speaker 3: For someone who doesn't like this episode, you sure didn't

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Speaker 3: get involved. You sure had a lot to say about it.

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Speaker 3: I'm just putting it out there.

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Speaker 2: I can't let you steal all the one light.

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Speaker 3: Well tomorrow, with older better Tomorrow, we've learned something up

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Speaker 3: that's really special and it's all about you, Kylie, So

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Speaker 3: I'm looking forward to that. The Happy Family's podcast, Though,

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Speaker 3: is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce

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Speaker 3: is our executive producer and for more and folve about

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Speaker 3: making your family happier, especially the hot Mess Summit. For

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Speaker 3: any family that's a hot mess and wants to be

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Speaker 3: less of a hot mess, please visit us on our

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Speaker 3: Facebook page dotr Justin Colson's Happy Families, or at happy

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Speaker 3: families dot com dot au