pediatric housecalls Robert R. Jarrett M.D. M.B.A. FAAP

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Showing posts from: Personality/Social

Parenting: “Local Expert on Tattoos and Body Piercings Passed Away”

[Guest Author] This article on tattoos and body piercings is the thirtieth in a series of guest posts from a pediatrician I’ve never met but have bonded with over sharing ideas, opinions and experiences; including having a penchant for medical blogging. His URL is up for sale, and I’ve lost track of him now after COVID, but his content will be here for safe keeping until he wants it back.

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Parenting: Boys and Girls are different

[Guest Author] This article on boys and girls are different is the twenty-fifth in a series of guest posts by a pediatrician I’ve never met but have bonded with because of uncannily similar ideas, opinions and experiences… including having a penchant for medical blogging. His URL is up for sale, and I’ve lost track of him, but his content will be here for safe keeping until he wants them back.

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Parenting: Dealing With Bad “Tween” Behavior

[Guest Author] This article on Bad Tween Behavior is the nineteenth in a series of guest posts from a pediatrician I’ve never met but have bonded with over sharing ideas, opinions and experiences; including having a penchant for medical blogging. I’m including them here, first: because my friends web site seems to have been “hacked” or something; and, second: because sometimes he just takes the words right out of my mouth.

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Parenting: Talk To Strangers

In this delightful talk about talking to strangers, Stark explores the overlooked benefits of pushing past our default discomfort when it comes to strangers and embracing those fleeting but profoundly beautiful moments of genuine connection. [Additional communication video]

Talk To Strangers
Most aren’t dangerous and if we don’t, we lose

Kio Stark has always talked to strangers. She started documenting her experiences when she realized that not everyone shares this predilection. She’s done extensive research into the emotional and political dimensions of stranger interactions and the complex dynamics how people relate to each other in public places.

She authored the TED Book When Strangers Meet, in which she argues for the pleasures and transformative possibilities of talking to people you don’t know.

Her novel Follow Me Down began as a series of true vignettes about strangers placed in the fictional context of a woman unraveling the eerie history of a lost letter misdelivered to her door. Additionally, she wrote Don’t Go Back to School, a handbook for independent learners.

She writes, teaches and speaks around the world about stranger interactions, independent learning and how people relate to technology. She also consults for startups and large companies helping them think about stranger interactions among their users and audiences.

Most Important Parenting, When It Appears The Least

[Guest Author] This article on the “Most Important Parenting” is the third in a series of guest posts from a pediatrician I’ve never met but have bonded with over sharing ideas, opinions and experiences; including having a penchant for medical blogging.
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Julie Lythcott-Haims: How to raise successful kids — without over-parenting

High Expectations and Micromanaging
NOT how to raise an adult

The dean of freshmen at Stanford, Julie Lythcott-Haims, will tell you about her discoveries regarding helicopter parenting based on her experiences with students and her two teenage sons.

“By loading kids with high expectations and micromanaging their lives at every turn, parents aren’t actually helping,” she observes with passion and wry humor. She asks parents to “stop defining their children’s success via grades and test scores.” Instead, she says, “they should focus on providing the oldest idea of all: unconditional love.”

We called it “over-coercion” when I studied psychology in school–it’s the same thing with the same results no matter what you call it and when it occurs and often leaves a fledgling adult wondering “Will this life ever turn out to be worth it?”

It’s as if parents are just afraid they (the kids) won’t have a future they can brag about to their friends and put stickers on the car bumpers about. Sort of: “hey kid, I don’t think you can achieve any of this without me.”

From her talk:

When we treat grades and scores and accolades and awards as a purpose of childhood all in furtherance of some hoped for admissions to a tiny number of collages or an entrance to a small number of careers—and even though we might help them achieve some short term wins by over helping—all of this comes at a long term cost of sense of self.

We should be far more concerned that they have the mind-set, the skill-set, the “well”-ness [and I add the “will”-ness] to be successful wherever they go.

Our kids need us to be a little less obsessed with grades and scores and a whole lot more interested in childhood providing a foundation for their success—built on things like: love… and chores.

The longest longitudinal study of humans ever conducted (called the Harvard grant study) found that professional success in life (what we want) comes from having done chores as a kid – and the earlier you started the better. That a roll up your sleeves and pitch in mind-set—a mind set that there’s some unpleasant work, someone’s gotta do it, it might as well be me— a mindset that says I will contribute my effort to the betterment of the whole – is what gets you ahead in the work place.

Happiness in life comes from Love – not from love of work – love of humans. Childhood need to teach our kids love in all aspects. They need to matter to us as humans – not because of their GPAs –

“I was treating my little Saywer and Avery like little Bonsai trees. But I’ve come to realize, after working with 1000s of other peoples kids, that my kids aren’t Bonsai trees, they’re wildflowers—of an unknown genus and species and it’s my job to provide a nourishing environment to strengthen them through chores and to love them so that they can love back — and to support them to become their glorious selves.”

 

Children’s Self Esteem

I met 13 year-old Shawn (not his real name) semi-conscious in the intensive care unit many years ago.

He had been dumped off on the front lawn of his foster home, stuporous, by some kids who sped away in their car.
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Sibling Rivalry

After many years I can still picture in my mind a little nine-year-old boy standing by the isolette containing his two-week old baby brother.

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Healing Hugs – Sometimes the Best Medicine

I definitely feel that the best gifts in parenting are the small things; for example, "healing hugs."

Some time ago in my medical school training, I was assigned to a hospital emergency room.  A child about thirteen was brought in by ambulance (more…)

Feeling – A Special Sense

Recently a young patient brought me a special gift.   Although he was ill, he had taken the time to gather one of the first autumn leaves which had begun to turn color.

He explained to me that he had picked the leaf recently on a “five senses” walk he had taken with his teacher.
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