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Speaker 1: This is the Happy Families podcast with doctor Justin Coilson,

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Speaker 1: where Luke and Suzie and this is the podcast for

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Speaker 1: the time poor parent who just wants answers.

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Speaker 2: Now, I'm very excited suits for the very first time

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Speaker 2: in our show's history, we're going to get feng shui studies. Studies.

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Speaker 2: This is maybe not BEng shwei, but it is a

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Speaker 2: concept of how we actually physically set up our home.

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Speaker 2: But we're talking about our children's success when it comes

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Speaker 2: to school and learning, and how our furniture choices and

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Speaker 2: the shape of her home could actually have the part

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Speaker 2: to play in.

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Speaker 3: That, Doctor Justin in that.

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Speaker 1: Doctor Justin Coilson from Heavy Families dot com tot.

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Speaker 3: Au this is this is an important thing when we

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Speaker 3: want our children to do as well as they can

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Speaker 3: at school, obviously, how do we set up our home

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Speaker 3: to encourage and foster a good learning environment.

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Speaker 4: Well, the first thing that I've got to say is

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Speaker 4: I have no idea about interior decorating, choosing paint colors.

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Speaker 4: Apparently there is some psychology around color. I don't know

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Speaker 4: what it is. I'm not colorblind, my dad is. I'm not.

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Speaker 4: I can see colours properly, but that doesn't mean that,

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Speaker 4: but in terms of the psychology of helping our children

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Speaker 4: to do well, what we can do to set up

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Speaker 4: our home environment. A really interesting study was published just

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Speaker 4: in the last couple of months that has followed some

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Speaker 4: kids two two hundred families from low socioeconomic backgrounds across

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Speaker 4: a ten year period, and what these researchers found was

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Speaker 4: pretty interesting. They said, if parents will do three things consistently,

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Speaker 4: they can predict that those children will do significantly better

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Speaker 4: at school than if parents don't do those three things.

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Speaker 3: I'm going to guess, I reckon, I can guess one

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Speaker 3: of them. Reading with your children.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, Well it's not precise, but it's part of a

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Speaker 4: bigger thing. And then the first thing was we need

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Speaker 4: to have books at home, books for our children to access.

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Speaker 4: We need to be readers ourselves. Leaders are readers, and

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Speaker 4: kids who do well at school come from homes usually

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Speaker 4: where there's a lot of books. What the research has

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Speaker 4: found was that from the age of twelve months, parents

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Speaker 4: have got picture books, no words, just pictures, and I'd

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Speaker 4: sit down with their kids and they would read the

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Speaker 4: picture books. In other words, rather than worrying about words,

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Speaker 4: they just sort of talk about the story. They talk

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Speaker 4: about the things that the person was wearing. They'd label

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Speaker 4: the color of their shirt, or the smile on the dog,

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Speaker 4: and the funny way that the birdie was flapping its wings,

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Speaker 4: and they would bring the child into this picture book story.

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Speaker 4: And as the kids got older, more and more books

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Speaker 4: needed to appear and the parents would read to them. Now,

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Speaker 4: there's a really interesting side note to this from other research.

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Speaker 4: As parents, most of us love to read to our kids,

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Speaker 4: but we often don't do it very well. The best

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Speaker 4: thing that we can do, especially for young children we're

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Speaker 4: reading to them, is to slow our reading down. We

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Speaker 4: read too fast. We sort of lay down on the

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Speaker 4: carpet next to their bed, or we lay down on

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Speaker 4: the bed beside them, and we say, ok, spend time.

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Speaker 4: Once upon a time, there was oh, look at that

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Speaker 4: the end. Good night.

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Speaker 2: It's like when it comes to that time when your exhausted,

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Speaker 2: you go, bring us, which books do you want? They

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Speaker 2: bring you three books and you go, that's big, that's big.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to go for the smallest one.

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Speaker 4: My kids will bring me eight or nine books and

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Speaker 4: they're like read and they're all the doctors of these books.

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Speaker 4: Our family is crazy about doctors and those poems. You

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Speaker 4: know how long those books are. We love them, but

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Speaker 4: they want to read eight of them at a time,

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Speaker 4: and I'm like, okay, we'll pick three, and they're like five.

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Speaker 4: We have this little negotiation. Usually they fall asleep in

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Speaker 4: about the third one because they take fifteen minutes of each.

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Speaker 4: But what the research shows is we should read slowly,

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Speaker 4: and we should pause, and we should ask the kids

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Speaker 4: what you do if that happened to you, or how

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Speaker 4: would that make you feel? You know, by doing that,

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Speaker 4: we engage them. We get their brain going, we get

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Speaker 4: them being creative, and that's really really important. So books, books, books, books.

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Speaker 4: What the research has found was that the more the

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Speaker 4: books are part of children's lives from the earliest beginnings,

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Speaker 4: the better it is that they'll do at school in

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Speaker 4: grade five, which is where this study has stopped at

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Speaker 4: this point. Any guesses for the second and third Minimal

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Speaker 4: screen time didn't come into the study at all, but

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Speaker 4: plenty of research suggests that screen time is a distraction,

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Speaker 4: and we helped to We need to help our kids

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Speaker 4: to minimize that screen time. Second one was educational toys

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Speaker 4: and games. Okay, noted didn't say educational apps, because in

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Speaker 4: the app Store at the moment, I think that there's

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Speaker 4: a little over ninety thousand educational apps, and what research

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Speaker 4: would suggest is that less than one percent of them

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Speaker 4: are actually educational. They're just mind numbing. So these are

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Speaker 4: these are the kinds of games that encourage children to

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Speaker 4: be counting or to be reading, or they're open ended

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Speaker 4: kind of toys and games where they get to explore

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Speaker 4: and be creative. So you know, things like snakes and ladders.

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Speaker 4: That's an educational game for a four year old because

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Speaker 4: they're learning how to count along the board and roll

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Speaker 4: of dice and do that. And if you're throwing two dice, wow,

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Speaker 4: now we're really getting some serious maths. And so those

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Speaker 4: kinds of things, whether it's Chinese checkers or drafts or

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Speaker 4: chess or you know, I guess I'm saying old school

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Speaker 4: sort of educational toys and games.

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Speaker 5: It's interesting because we've mentioned before about how our six

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Speaker 5: year old is wonderful of these six timestables that he's

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Speaker 5: never been taught at school because he loves afl and

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Speaker 5: so the fun that's involved with doing the simple math

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Speaker 5: has given him skills that school couldn't possibly get him

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Speaker 5: to learn so.

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Speaker 4: Quickly, perfect example, great example of that. And the third

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Speaker 4: thing that we need to do to set our children

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Speaker 4: up to do well actually has less to do with

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Speaker 4: the way we set up our home and more to

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Speaker 4: do with our availability. The researchers have found again and

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Speaker 4: this has been shown so many times now and this

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Speaker 4: was only looking at but the more emotionally available, the

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Speaker 4: more responsive mums are to their children, the better the

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Speaker 4: kids do. They feel safe, they feel secure, they're open

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Speaker 4: to learning, they do better.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Wow, so good. I was thinking when we were talking

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Speaker 3: about how to set up your home for children's success,

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Speaker 3: I'm like, well, put the desk in the corner and

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Speaker 3: make sure the lighting's good, and make sure they've got

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Speaker 3: plenty of you know, sharpened pencils.

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Speaker 4: But you know, Susie, that's important. It's just that it's

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Speaker 4: not important in those first five, six, seven, eight years

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Speaker 4: of life because the kids aren't doing study at home

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Speaker 4: at that point. Once they get into high school, yeah,

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Speaker 4: you know, we need to be having conversations around screen time,

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Speaker 4: access to screens in bedrooms, having appropriate lighting, getting rid

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Speaker 4: of distractions, keeping things nice and quiet. All of that

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Speaker 4: comes into it, and there's plenty of research around what

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Speaker 4: we need to do. But it still seems that the

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Speaker 4: best predictors are engagement with books, engagement with parents, and

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Speaker 4: having that downtime where we get to play and explore

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Speaker 4: and be creative. Those seem seem to be three of

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Speaker 4: the critical things to help our kids do well at school.

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Speaker 2: So good, beautiful, very simple, very I like it when

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Speaker 2: when we hear the expert in the research that says,

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Speaker 2: you know what I can do that, I can actually

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Speaker 2: apply that and I can make some adjustments. And I

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Speaker 2: always told you, sus we had this fight because I

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Speaker 2: always wanted our bookshelves with books on it, and you said,

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Speaker 2: but you've never read any of them. I go, but

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Speaker 2: it's good. It makes me look smart, se justin not

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Speaker 2: only doesn't make me look smart, justin saying you need

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Speaker 2: to have books in the house. It's good for our

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Speaker 2: kids as well.

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Speaker 4: The kids can look at them, and just as yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 4: oh my gosh, dad must be so smart look at

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Speaker 4: all the books.

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Speaker 2: So he hasn't read.

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Speaker 3: We underestimate those, most.

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Speaker 2: Doctor Justin Gilson from Happy Families dot com dot are you.

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Speaker 2: Thank you so much.

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Speaker 1: Thanks guys, and there are loads of resources to help

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Speaker 1: along with your parenting at the website happy families dot

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Speaker 1: com dot au. Or if you're interested in having doctor

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Speaker 1: Justin Colson speak at your school, community group, or organization,

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Speaker 1: you can find out more at Justincoilson dot com