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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, if you're a parent who worries that your kids

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Speaker 2: are on their screens too much, or if they're not

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Speaker 2: getting out and about enough, there is value in considering

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Speaker 2: how much screen usage am I involved in?

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Speaker 1: And now here's the stars of our show, My mom

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Speaker 1: and Dad.

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Speaker 3: It's my dad's birthday today. Happy birthday Dad. I don't

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Speaker 3: think he listens to the podcasts.

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Speaker 4: I don't think he does either.

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Speaker 3: No, maybe he will today, because that's about the extent.

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Speaker 3: I'll give him a call. I haven't thought of what

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Speaker 3: to get him.

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Speaker 2: Kylie, Hello, This is doctor Justin Coulson, the pairenting expert

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Speaker 2: on Channel Line's Parental Guidance and the author of seven

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Speaker 2: books about making families happy, including my most recent, It's

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Speaker 2: a Dad's Guide to Pregnancy for Dummies, the second Australian edition. Kylie,

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Speaker 2: I Today is a doctor's Desk episode of the podcast

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Speaker 2: for Big Star. Have landed on my desk in the

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Speaker 2: last little while that have fascinated me, captivated my attention,

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Speaker 2: and I thought we've got to share them. But before

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Speaker 2: we do that, did you know a little bit late

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Speaker 2: to the party here. There was some articles published in

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Speaker 2: twenty nineteen that I missed, but I found them. Now,

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Speaker 2: did you know that the makers of Uno have come

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Speaker 2: out and said you're not allowed to stack your draw force.

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Speaker 2: You're not allowed to stack your draw twos. You put

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Speaker 2: one down, the next person draws for or draws two,

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Speaker 2: and the game moves on.

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Speaker 4: That makes so much sense.

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Speaker 3: Destroyed my life.

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Speaker 4: I think that's a great rule.

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Speaker 3: I have won so many games of Uno because I'm.

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Speaker 4: Stacked sixteen cards that you can't even hold them in

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Speaker 4: their hands. Hilarious.

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Speaker 2: Our Uno game is going to be so boring now.

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Speaker 2: I think that we need to revolt. We need an

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Speaker 2: Uno revolution.

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Speaker 4: Do you know what they did?

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Speaker 3: Who did?

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Speaker 4: They created Flip. It's awesome.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we bought Uno Flip. If you haven't checked

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Speaker 2: it out, you can be thinking you're about to win,

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Speaker 2: and then the person beside you has the Flip card

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Speaker 2: and you flip it over, and all of a sudden,

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Speaker 2: we do another thing when we're playing. You know, every

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Speaker 2: time somebody puts down a zero, you've got to change

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Speaker 2: cards with the purpose.

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Speaker 4: Flip does all of that for you.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, it's got all of.

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Speaker 4: The fun rules, and it just changes things and changes

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Speaker 4: the colors and everything I love.

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Speaker 2: You know, Hey, yeah, we need to get on with

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Speaker 2: the doctor's desk today. Four studies. Like I said, the

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Speaker 2: first one that I want to talk about, Kylie, ask

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Speaker 2: me anything you want about it. It's the effects of

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Speaker 2: limiting recreational screen media use on physical activity and sleep

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Speaker 2: in families with children, A cluster randomized clinical trial. That's

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Speaker 2: what I miss about academia.

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Speaker 4: That big long sentence that they couldn't break up into

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Speaker 4: a paragraph.

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Speaker 3: Titles of studies that mean something. Do I need to

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Speaker 3: say it again?

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Speaker 2: The effects of limiting recreational screen media use on physical

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Speaker 2: activity and sleep in families with children, A cluster randomized

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Speaker 2: clinical trial.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so here's what happened in English.

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Speaker 2: Okay, we've got some researchers who have sat down and said,

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Speaker 2: what happens when parents are on their screens a lot?

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Speaker 2: They're in Denmark. What happens when parents are on their

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Speaker 2: screen means a lot to their children's physical activity. In

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Speaker 2: other words, let's not look at how much kids are

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Speaker 2: on their screens. Let's look at what parents are doing

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Speaker 2: on their screens. So they went out to the population.

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Speaker 2: They did a whole lot of surveys and they got

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Speaker 2: parents who are working full time and then also spend

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Speaker 2: an additional minimum two and a half hours per day

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Speaker 2: of what we would call recreational screen time flicking, scrolling, tapping,

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Speaker 2: but not doing anything productive.

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Speaker 3: Sound like anyone you know.

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Speaker 4: Well, you got rid of all your apps, so it's

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Speaker 4: not you anymore.

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Speaker 3: I wonder who it could be, do you know what?

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Speaker 4: Just before you carry on? You've been pointing the finger

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Speaker 4: at me for a little bit now. And I finally

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Speaker 4: worked out how to check my screen time the other day.

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Speaker 4: I had never known how to do it right, and

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Speaker 4: I was actually blown away because I've been looking at

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Speaker 4: the time. It would come up as a notification to

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Speaker 4: tell me that my time's up or down depending on you.

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Speaker 3: Every week, it tells you how much you've been using

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Speaker 3: you and.

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Speaker 4: I'm like, that's a lot of time, That's what I'm saying. Yeah,

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Speaker 4: until I realized that an hour and a half of

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Speaker 4: it is Google Maps and another hour of it is

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Speaker 4: Marco Polo, which is my form of communication with my friends.

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Speaker 3: Right, I hardly scroll at all podcasts.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, podcasts they're up there as well, Like I use

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Speaker 4: my phone as an information base.

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Speaker 2: I'm glad you said that, because when we look at

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Speaker 2: the raw screen time number, it doesn't give us good

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Speaker 2: quality information. We do need to dive into it. This

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Speaker 2: is what the research has found though in Denmark when

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Speaker 2: they were looking at this issue with these families. So

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Speaker 2: they've got a bunch of families, stuck some of them

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Speaker 2: into an experimental condition, some of them into a control condition.

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Speaker 2: In the control condition, you just don't do anything different.

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Speaker 2: But what they got with the experimental group, with all

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Speaker 2: these families that are in the upper echelons of recreational

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Speaker 2: screen use, the parents are using their phones for more

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Speaker 2: than two and a half hours per day, and they

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Speaker 2: got them to commit to dropping down to less than

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Speaker 2: three hours of recreational screen time per week.

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Speaker 4: Is Google Maps recreation?

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Speaker 3: No it's not.

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Speaker 4: Oh it's not.

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Speaker 3: Probably not.

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Speaker 4: I don't know what that really affects. If we're storing

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Speaker 4: you here, I don't know where I'm going, So every

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Speaker 4: time I get in the car, I have to put

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Speaker 4: Google Maps on just to make sure I'm going to

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Speaker 4: the right entrance for the shopping center. For goodness sakes,

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Speaker 4: there's got.

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Speaker 2: Too many anyway, Here's what happened with this study once

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Speaker 2: the families, Once the parents reduced their screen usage, their

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Speaker 2: recreational screen usage after work, the kids started to engage

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Speaker 2: in physical activity. The average amount of increased physical activity

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Speaker 2: was an extra forty four point eight minutes per day.

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Speaker 2: In the control group, it went up by one minute

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Speaker 2: per day. In other words, when parents get off their

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Speaker 2: phones and stop the recreational screen usage after work, when

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Speaker 2: they're full time workers and the kids are now at

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Speaker 2: home and they're at home with them, well.

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Speaker 4: I'm going to suggest that they're more engaged. They're more

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Speaker 4: engaged with family.

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Speaker 3: Of course.

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Speaker 2: Now here's what's really interesting though. It didn't make any

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Speaker 2: difference to sleep, and only for physical activity. So I

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Speaker 2: want to mention there's purely to say if you're a

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Speaker 2: parent who worries that your kids are on their screens

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Speaker 2: too much, or if they're not getting out and about enough,

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Speaker 2: there is value in considering how much screen usage am

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Speaker 2: I involved in? And sure, if you're on Google Maps,

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Speaker 2: so you listen to podcasts and you're engaged in life,

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Speaker 2: then it's probably not the issue. But if you are

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Speaker 2: scrolling for two two and a half three hours per

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Speaker 2: day and the kids are fairly sedentary. By dropping your

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Speaker 2: screen usage down, you're probably going to change the way

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Speaker 2: you live and the kids will follow along. I think

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Speaker 2: it's a fascinating study and I wanted to share it.

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Speaker 4: Well, what's number two?

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Speaker 2: The second one is a breastfeeding study. I love these studies. Now,

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Speaker 2: now I want to highlight before we talk about this

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Speaker 2: particular piece of research which comes from Oxford University, and

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Speaker 2: it was published in the journal plus plus plus. I

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Speaker 2: don't actually know what plus means. How bad is that

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Speaker 2: I've been reading the journal plus for ages and I

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Speaker 2: don't know what it means anyway, really really smart piece

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Speaker 2: of research. So for a long time now, for decades,

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Speaker 2: and I need to say, if you haven't been able

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Speaker 2: to breastfeed your babies, I'm not pointing fingers.

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Speaker 3: We're not trying to guild or shame anyone.

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Speaker 4: Here.

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Speaker 2: Is literally just reporting on what some data says about breastfeeding.

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Speaker 2: So over the years, we've known that there's a relationship

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Speaker 2: between breastfeeding and intelligence. That is, kids who are breastfed

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Speaker 2: tend to score higher on cognitive tests.

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Speaker 3: Okay, but there's a whole lot of.

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Speaker 2: Questions around whether there are other characteristics. It's really hard

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Speaker 2: to get good data on this. So this is a

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Speaker 2: study of eight thousand infants born in two thousand to

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Speaker 2: two thousand and two and followed until they were fourteen

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Speaker 2: years of age. It's called the UK Millennium Cohort Study.

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Speaker 2: The researchers have essentially looked at the extent to which

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Speaker 2: they were breastfed, the duration of the breastfeeding as they

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Speaker 2: grew up, and looked at the scores on their cognitive

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Speaker 2: tests at age five, seven, eleven, and fourteen. We're talking

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Speaker 2: about verbal cognitive scores and spatial cognitive scores, and Kylie,

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Speaker 2: it will be no surprise that this longitudinal research confirms

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Speaker 2: previous studies, and that is that kids that are breastfed

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Speaker 2: tend to score higher on cognitive tests.

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Speaker 3: How big is a difference, I'm so glad you asked.

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Speaker 2: The research suggests that there is a difference of approximately

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Speaker 2: a quarter of a standard deviation, so.

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Speaker 4: In Layman's terms, because that means nothing to me.

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Speaker 3: About three to four IQ points.

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Speaker 4: And what does that mean?

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Speaker 2: Well, if I was standing next to you in my

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Speaker 2: IQ is one hundred and one and yours was one hundred.

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Speaker 3: And four, nobody would be able to tell the.

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Speaker 4: Difference that's what I'm thinking. So it doesn't sound like

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Speaker 4: it's a huge deal.

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Speaker 3: No it's not. It's a really small deal.

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Speaker 2: And so that should bring comfort to those who have

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Speaker 2: not been able to breastfeed but wanted to, or like

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Speaker 2: in your case, your milk just dried up after a

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Speaker 2: few months and you weren't able to breastfeed nearly as

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Speaker 2: long as you wanted to. There's reassurance there for parents

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Speaker 2: who have not been able to breastfeed. At an individual level,

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Speaker 2: that three or four points isn't very much, but if

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Speaker 2: we look at it a population level, it actually becomes

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Speaker 2: really important. And so we're looking at small numbers versus

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Speaker 2: large numbers here, and at a population level it does

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Speaker 2: matter and it is important, and that's why it's important

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Speaker 2: that we can You need to promote breastfeeding as the

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Speaker 2: primary way that children should be fed for at least

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Speaker 2: at least the first six months, but preferably the first

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Speaker 2: twelve months if your body will do it, and longer

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Speaker 2: if you.

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Speaker 3: Can after the break.

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Speaker 4: We've got a study on smacking or the correlation with

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Speaker 4: physical abuse, and another study which has looked into crying

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Speaker 4: and what would be considered excessive crying in newborns.

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Speaker 2: If you could read your daughter's mind, what would you hear?

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Speaker 2: Teen girls who are anxious about fitting in and struggling

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Speaker 2: to find happiness and they need you, mum and dad

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Speaker 2: to be there as they tackle these challenges and much more.

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Speaker 2: Misconnection is the cutting edge, science backed book you need

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Speaker 2: to get deep into your daughter's mind and connect about

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Speaker 2: the things that matter to her. Available at the Happy

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Speaker 2: Family's Shop online.

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Speaker 4: It's the Happy Famili's podcast, the podcast for the time

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Speaker 4: poor parent who just wants answers. Now another report on smacking.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so we talk.

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Speaker 2: About smacking from time to time on the podcast and

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Speaker 2: my opinion, it hasn't changed and the research never gives

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Speaker 2: us anything different here. So this is a brand new

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Speaker 2: study published in July twenty twenty two in the research

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Speaker 2: journal Child Abuse Research the research journal Don't Mock Me,

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Speaker 2: Child Abuse and Neglect. What the research essentially found is

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Speaker 2: that there's probably a couple of things I need to

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Speaker 2: highlight here. First off, we know that around about a

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Speaker 2: minimum of one third of kids under five experience smacking.

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Speaker 2: It's just it's the reality is the world that we

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Speaker 2: live in. We're trying to stop it, but it continues

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Speaker 2: to happen. We've got a whole lot of studies that

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Speaker 2: show that when kids are smacked, they're also at risk

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Speaker 2: at heightened risk of physical abuse. Now, I know some

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Speaker 2: people are going to say, well, smacking is physical abuse.

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Speaker 2: Let's not get.

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Speaker 3: Into that conversation right now.

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Speaker 2: Let's just highlight hitting a child, like giving them a

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Speaker 2: tap on the back side or giving them a smack

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Speaker 2: because they've done the wrong thing, might be considered at

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Speaker 2: the lower end of the physical abuse continuum, but there

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Speaker 2: are much more significant forms of physical abuse further along

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Speaker 2: the continuum. And if a child is smacked, research has

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Speaker 2: shown us that they are at increased risk of physical

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Speaker 2: abuse as well. So this study looked at one hundred

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Speaker 2: and fifty six thousand kids across fifty six lower and

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Speaker 2: middle income countries. It was a part of a massive

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Speaker 2: UNISEF cluster survey, big numbers onered and nearly one hundred

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Speaker 2: and sixty thousand kids. And what the research has essentially

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Speaker 2: found was that smacking of a child was associated with

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Speaker 2: higher risk of physical abuse. And if you were to

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Speaker 2: take all of that massive data and bring it down

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Speaker 2: to let's say you've got one hundred kids, imagine that

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Speaker 2: the entire world. Basically, in this sample is reduced to

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Speaker 2: one hundred kids, and we're going to work out what

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Speaker 2: percentage of them are getting smacked and what percentage of

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Speaker 2: them are being abused. If there's one hundred kids, thirty

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Speaker 2: three of them, thirty four of them are going to

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Speaker 2: be smacked according to the data. Now, I reckon it's

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Speaker 2: actually to be more than that, but let's just stick

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Speaker 2: with thirty three to thirty four for now. What the

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Speaker 2: research showed is that if thirty three of them were smacked,

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Speaker 2: seven of them experienced physical abuse. And what they also

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Speaker 2: found when they did all their stats was that if

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Speaker 2: we in relation to the population of abused children, if

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Speaker 2: we can get smacking out of the conversation, if we

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Speaker 2: can stop people smacking their kids, we'll be able to

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Speaker 2: reduce physical abuse by at least thirty three percent, which.

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Speaker 4: Is a big, a significant number.

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Speaker 3: A big reduction.

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Speaker 2: So once again, we're not suggesting that if people have

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Speaker 2: smacked their kids or do smack their kids. While we

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Speaker 2: would always reject the idea that it's a good way

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Speaker 2: to discipline kids, we're not saying that you're going to

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Speaker 2: end up abusing your child physically if you've given them

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Speaker 2: a whack or a tap because you lost it one day,

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Speaker 2: or because you just couldn't get their attention. What we

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Speaker 2: are saying, though, is that the risk at a population

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Speaker 2: level of physical abuse goes up significantly when kids are smacked,

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Speaker 2: and it drops by more more than a third. The

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Speaker 2: risk of physical abuse drops by more than a third

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Speaker 2: if we can stop smacking in our communities, and I

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Speaker 2: think that that's a cause that's worth getting behind.

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Speaker 4: Our last one is all about crying. Anyone with a

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Speaker 4: newborn baby knows that familiar sound.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of I want to write a

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Speaker 2: book that every parent can rely on at two o'clock

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Speaker 2: in the morning when their child is screaming and they

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Speaker 2: are sleep deprived and they're just losing it. So there's

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Speaker 2: some research that's been around since the nineteen sixties. In fact,

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Speaker 2: if you go into a lot of childcare nurse sort

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Speaker 2: of places, you'll see you'll see this graph that basically says,

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Speaker 2: and it's an old study, but the study concludes that

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Speaker 2: infant crying normally peaks at around about the age of

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Speaker 2: six weeks, and then it decreases pretty well and stabilizes

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Speaker 2: at a nice low level at about twelve weeks. When

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Speaker 2: you think about our experience, you're looking at me with

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Speaker 2: a puzzled look on your face.

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Speaker 4: Number one, I've never heard, never heard that in all

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Speaker 4: of my parenting. That was never a discuss.

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Speaker 3: You niver saw the graph. Okay, never saw the graph.

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Speaker 4: But I think about baby number two, and she peaked

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Speaker 4: as soon as she came out into the world. I

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Speaker 4: think about baby number one, and she took five days

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Speaker 4: before she found her lungs, but once she found them,

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Speaker 4: she didn't stop.

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Speaker 3: She's in the twenties now and she still use them

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Speaker 3: a lot.

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Speaker 4: They're all so different, and I don't think that there

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Speaker 4: was any particular rhyme or reason to the amount of

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Speaker 4: crying that they did at any given stage of their infancy.

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Speaker 2: Well, this thing's called the cry curve, and it's, like

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Speaker 2: I said, it's been used in a variety of countries

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Speaker 2: and in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons.

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Speaker 2: But ultimately they call this the CRII curve, and I'm

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Speaker 2: pleased to say that it's beloney beloney. New research has

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Speaker 2: been compiled from UH with data from fifty seven research

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Speaker 2: articles from all over the world in which parents have

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Speaker 2: registered how much their infants cry every.

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Speaker 4: Day, and guess what, there's no rhyme or reason no

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Speaker 4: kids cry. When you think about what crying is used for,

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Speaker 4: it's an infant's only form of communication. Yes, so they're

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Speaker 4: going to cry for everything.

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Speaker 3: I need to help.

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Speaker 4: It's the only way they can tell us what's going on.

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Speaker 3: I'm wet, I need to be touched.

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Speaker 2: I'm reading a really cool book at the moment called

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Speaker 2: Raised by Animals.

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Speaker 3: It's by you know what.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about it next week when we

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Speaker 2: do book club. But what I've picked up in this

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Speaker 2: book is just amazing in terms of how unresponsive we

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Speaker 2: are as adults humans compared to other animals throughout the

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Speaker 2: animal kingdom to the needs of their young. You're right,

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Speaker 2: babies cry because it's the only way that they can communicate,

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Speaker 2: and they tell us really important things. Essentially, though there

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Speaker 2: is no cry curve. Essentially, there is no simple way

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Speaker 2: to figure out whether your child's crying patterns are.

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Speaker 3: Normal or not.

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Speaker 2: But the research is also found and I did think

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Speaker 2: this was interesting that children in non Western countries like India, Mexico,

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Speaker 2: and even South Korea cry a lot less than children

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Speaker 2: from English speaking countries like the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia,

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Speaker 2: and the researchers think that maybe because the parents in

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Speaker 2: those locations in the non western countries are more responsive

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Speaker 2: to their children's cries. Therefore the children don't need to

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Speaker 2: cry so much because they get response. So that was

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Speaker 2: a published study in Child Development Child Development Crying in

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Speaker 2: the First twelve Months of Life, a systematic review and

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Speaker 2: meta analysis of cross country parent reported.

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Speaker 3: Data and modeling of the cry curve. I love science.

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Speaker 4: I noticed because we started off with two studies when

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Speaker 4: we first started doing the Doctor's Desk, and now you've

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Speaker 4: squeezed in four into one episode, and.

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Speaker 2: I've already gotten next months ready to go, oh wow.

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Speaker 2: We hope that there's some ideas in here that have

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Speaker 2: picked your curiosity. I want to make one last point here.

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Speaker 2: Science changes. Scientists get stuff wrong, and that's what some

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Speaker 2: of these studies that I've shared today have highlighted. It's

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Speaker 2: really important that we actually use our intuition and that

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Speaker 2: we're thoughtful about what we're doing as parents. The more

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Speaker 2: intentional we can be, the more involved we can be

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Speaker 2: with our kids, the more responsive we can be to

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Speaker 2: our children, the more likely it is that we're going

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Speaker 2: to make fewer mistakes, including the science supported mistakes that

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Speaker 2: have been going on for decades. So I just want

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Speaker 2: to put that out there, particularly in a relation to

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Speaker 2: that cry curve data that's been going around since nineteen

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Speaker 2: sixty two and has been wrong. Like that's sixty years

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Speaker 2: of misinformation. It's kind of like everyone's saying sugar's good

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Speaker 2: and fat's bad, and now in the last couple of decades,

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Speaker 2: that's all starting to turn on its head. So science

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Speaker 2: still gets it wrong, but I think that these studies

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Speaker 2: give us some pretty good food for thought. The Happy

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Speaker 2: Families podcast is produced by Justin Rowland from Bridge Media.

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Speaker 2: Craig Bruce is our executive producer or The info for

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Speaker 2: these studies is going to be found and available in

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Speaker 2: the show notes, including some simple media oriented summaries as

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Speaker 2: well as the actual studies themselves, so please check out

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Speaker 2: the show notes if you'd like to know more about that.

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Speaker 2: And tomorrow, missus Happy Families.

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Speaker 3: It's our old Do Better Tomorrow episode.

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Speaker 2: I can't wait to highlight some whims in relation to

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Speaker 2: the way that we're being intentional about the way we

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Speaker 2: raise our kids.