Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
102. Motherhood in Crisis: Erica Komisar on Raising Mentally and Emotionally Healthy Kids
In today’s episode of Dates, Mates, and Babies with the Vallottons, hosts Jason and Lauren Vallotton sit down with renowned psychoanalyst and author Erica Komisar to explore the profound challenges and rewards of parenting. Erica, a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW), brings years of expertise in child development and the psychological aspects of motherhood and fatherhood. She has authored two insightful books:
- Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters
- Chicken Little: The Sky Isn’t Falling
In this conversation, Erica highlights the crucial role emotional attachment plays in a child's development, particularly during the first three years. She discusses the importance of both mothers and fathers being present and emotionally available, as well as how societal pressures and guilt impact the way mothers show up for their families.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- The key ingredients for building a healthy attachment with your child, particularly in the first three years.
- Insights from Erica’s book Being There on the lasting impact of maternal presence during a child's formative years.
- Why father involvement is just as crucial as mothers in raising emotionally resilient children.
- How to address societal pressures, guilt, and the overwhelming demands placed on mothers today.
- The importance of staying engaged with your children throughout adolescence, even when they seem to need you less.
About Erica Komisar:
Erica Komisar is a licensed clinical social worker and psychoanalyst with extensive experience working in child development and parenting. She has authored two influential books, Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters and Chicken Little: The Sky Isn’t Falling. Her work emphasizes the emotional and psychological needs of children, focusing on the vital role parents play in shaping their children's emotional well-being. Erica's expertise has made her a sought-after speaker and resource for parents looking to navigate the challenges of raising children in today’s world.
Where to Find Erica Komisar:
She’s on Instagram. @ericakomisar
To learn more about Erica's work and upcoming events, visit her official website.
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We're the valetins and we are passionate about people.
Speaker 1:Every human was created for fulfilling relational connection.
Speaker 2:But that's not always what comes easiest.
Speaker 1:We know this because of our wide range of personal experience, as well as our years of working with people.
Speaker 2:So we're going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family and parenting to encourage, entertain and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational health.
Speaker 1:Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Dates, mates and Babies with the Bellatons, where we dive into the joys and challenges of relationships, parenting and everything in between.
Speaker 2:That is right, and today we really have an extra special privilege sitting down with Erica Commissar an incredible psychoanalyst, parenting expert and author of two groundbreaking books, being there. Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters and Chicken Little, the Sky Isn't Falling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, erica's work has guided countless parents in navigating the emotional needs of children and creating stronger connections. Her insights go straight to the heart of what it means to raise emotionally healthy kids in today's fast-paced, sometimes overwhelming world.
Speaker 2:And whether you're already familiar with her books or just discovering her perspective, this conversation is going to be packed with wisdom on parenting, emotional health and the power of being present. So settle in, let's dive into this fascinating discussion with Erica Commissar.
Speaker 1:All right, guys, let's get started. Erica, I'm so thankful you're on here with us.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. Yeah, we're honored to have you here. Could you start, Erica, just in case some of our listeners aren't familiar with you, I would love if we could start just by having you share a bit about your background. What led?
Speaker 3:you to focus on motherhood as both a passion and an area of expertise. So I'm a psychoanalyst and an author, but I have been in private practice for over 30 years and I was seeing in my practice a kind of uptick in the mental illness of children, particularly young children, who were developing disorders as young as you know, two and three years of age. They were being diagnosed with ADHD and behavioral problems, but it was a real kind of increase and I saw in my practice that it was connected to the absence of mothers or primary attachment figures, who are usually mothers, but not always. But there wasn't a primary attachment figure in the first three years raising children. It was, they were being put in daycare, they were being raised by babysitters or nannies.
Speaker 3:But and so I saw this and I looked into the research, the neuroscience research, the epigenetics research, the attachment theory, and what I found in the research and reading, you know, thousands of pages of research over a period of about 13 years was that what I was seeing in my practice had some neurobiological basis and that mothers or primary attachment figures usually the mother were not just emotionally necessary for babies but were biologically necessary and that the changes and shifts in our culture, which are really very, very recent in terms of history, were shifting away from the irreducible needs of children and what they require to become mentally healthy in the future.
Speaker 3:And so I wrote a book called being there, which was a book about the neuroscience of attachment. Basically, what do children need in the zero to three period to become mentally healthy in the future? And zero to three is what we call the first critical period of brain development. The second critical period of brain development is adolescence, or nine to 25. And so my second book was about nine to 25, which is what parents can do in these two critical periods of brain development to make sure that their children are mentally healthy in the future.
Speaker 2:Amazing.
Speaker 1:I mean, when I look at the work that you're doing and what you've poured your heart and soul into, I don't know that there's anything more important on the planet than this conversation right here. And so, while I just have so much respect for what you're doing and what you've poured your heart into, what does it look like to create a healthy attachment? I mean, that feels like the starting point right For the conversation and even for your work. Could you walk us through, like, what's the recipe for a healthy attachment?
Speaker 3:Well, if you think about what attachment is, healthy attachment, security, is when a baby is provided with an environment that makes them feel safe and secure. So when an infant is born, they're born completely neurologically and emotionally and physically fragile. Fragile. We're unlike any other mammal. We're unlike any other species in that our babies are born so so fragile. In fact, many theories believe that human babies shouldn't be born for another nine months to a year, so we call it the fourth trimester, right.
Speaker 3:So. So we, you know, call it the fourth trimester, right. So because the only reason that they are born as early as they are and as fragile as they are is because our brains grew so big they could never fit through the birth canal. But it's more than that that energetically we couldn't host them, we couldn't carry them. But when we stood up I don't know if you've ever read the book Sapiens when we stood up on two feet as a species, we couldn't give birth to these huge heads that were developing. So we started giving birth much earlier, and what that meant is that carrying your baby on your body for the first year was critical to the safety and security and not only the physical security but the neurological development of that baby. And in all parts of the world, including the Western world, babies were born and put born on mother's bodies for about a year.
Speaker 3:And then modern culture dictated that really it started more with the Industrial Revolution, I would say. Mothers started going into factories and working and leaving babies behind. And then we move into the 20th century and we had things like the women's movement and the me movement and all of these movements that even the war, even post-war, when women had to go to work to support their families. So a lot of historical factors contributed in the last 125 years to a shift in culture away from prioritizing the needs of infants and toddlers and really focusing on adult needs. And so you know, although that all sounds great, you know, women get what they want and economists get what they want, and governments get what they want because they babies don't get what they need.
Speaker 3:And so we haven't wanted to talk about this as a culture, because it would imply that there has to be some change, because the babies aren't going to catch up to us so quickly, meaning they're not going to. It's going to take hundreds, maybe thousands of years for the babies to make this shift. So what's happened is babies have accommodated pathologically. They've developed things. So, in other words, to accommodate to the needs of the adults, babies have developed pathological defenses, things like attachment disorders, dissociative behaviors, narcissistic disorders, things which are a response to the environment, not meeting their critical need to feel safe and secure.
Speaker 2:Erica. So as we're thinking about that, I mean my curiosities run wild. I feel like I have a hundred questions. But one thing that I'm wondering. You know we've seen such an uptick in things and you mentioned things like ADHD and our own daughter has. We had her seeing an occupational therapist. She's got some some sensory modulation things and that we're working through that are improving as she's, as she's getting a little bit older, but it's.
Speaker 2:You know it's hard to as your average mom on the street in a day, it's hard to sometimes decipher between. You know that's the what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Are we talking about it because it's happening more or are we talking about it because we just didn't use to talk about it? Or? But it sounds like it coincides with what your research is telling us, that a lot of these things are pathologically developed in our kids over time as a compensation. So what do you think about that when we're seeing all this uptick in sensory issues and ADHD and aggression and stuff that gosh? I mean our parents were not talking about this when they were raising us. Do you think these things are connected? Or how does the average parent decipher, like what's going on in their home. Am I dealing with a situation that's induced by my own negligence in that zero to three period, or are we talking about something that's just? Some kids come out extra sensitive and this is just what we're dealing with. What would you say to those parents?
Speaker 3:Well, that's a complicated question, so I'll give you a complicated answer. Well, that's a complicated question, so I'll give you a complicated answer. It's multivariable attachment figure. Who is there the majority of the time, who provides them with a sense of physical, emotional, safety and presence? That child has as good a chance of becoming mentally healthy as a child who's born without that genetic precursor of neurological sensitivity. They actually found a gene it's something called a short allele on the serotonin receptor. So we need serotonin to pick up good feelings, but we also need it to regulate emotions, and so the idea is that some children are born with the inability to access that feeling, are born with the inability to access that feeling, and those children, when they face stress, they are more likely to develop things like ADHD or behavioral problems or depression and anxiety. So none of those disorders that I just mentioned have any genetic meaning. You're not, you don't genetically acquire depression, anxiety, adhd or behavioral problems. What you do genetically can acquire is is the gene for sensitivity. And again, if we so, that's always existed, you can always, you've always been, and that's passed down genetically. So if you are a sensitive baby, you're more likely to pass that down and those babies are harder to soothe. They're more. They have more sensitivity to touch, to sound, they're just, they're more sensitive to any physical or emotional or environmental stress. Okay, separation from their primary attachment figure. Putting a baby who's sensitive in daycare is more likely to result in a bad outcome. Right, in terms of why we is it the chicken or the egg? The answer is all of these disorders existed, so things like sensitivity existed. We're more able to identify it now and we talk about it more we also.
Speaker 3:There is also the phenomenon of over-diagnosing children. Should I say wanting to put labels on children rather than understand that they aren't labels or buckets to throw children in, but in fact are responses to stress. So if we look at it from a different angle and say that our children are trying to tell us in the only way they can, which is they develop symptoms and that's the. You know, if you have symptoms, you go to a doctor and the doctor diagnoses those symptoms and says well, you know, this is the result of this. We are not doing that.
Speaker 3:We are labeling, throwing kids in buckets, instead of saying that this is a stress issue. This child is under stress and, just like an adult who went under stress, maybe one adult might feel they get headaches, another gets backaches, another gets stomach aches. Children express their stress by going into fight or flight, which is the evolutionary response to stress. They either become aggressive, as in behavioral problems, or they develop ADHD, which is a flight response. Adhd is not a D. There's no disorder in it. It's a flight response to stress. So why aren't we dealing with the stress that's causing these symptoms, instead of throwing kids in buckets?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:Man. This is like one of my favorite conversations that we've ever had on the podcast. Um I'm I really am so passionate about it. One of the things that I focus on a lot is men. I work a lot with men and I've.
Speaker 1:I've just in my life I've done that for for 20 years I've worked with sex addicts, um, you know, worked with, uh, worked with different disabilities, with men, all kinds of stuff, and I lead a men's discipleship movement and one of the things that I've focused on a lot is the effect that has taken place because of the absence of fatherhood. And I know, right now we know we live in the most fatherless generation that's ever been alive, where our fathers aren't at war, right, dad isn't at home because he's fighting a battle or he's not at home because he doesn't want to be at home. And a lot of that, in my opinion, came out of the sexual revolution. And, when I look at it, to me the greatest contributing factor, in my opinion, to a healthy child is a healthy mom and the greatest contributing factor to a healthy mom is a healthy present husband. That's there, um, what has happened through the past 40, 50, 60 years of men vacating their role as a husband, as a provider, as a protector, as a promoter? Um, you know, one in one and four children right now, uh, live in a home without a father.
Speaker 1:And I see that, I see that moms have, moms are overburdened, they're trying to.
Speaker 1:A lot of women are trying to do the role of both parents, which feels really impossible.
Speaker 1:Also, I see a lot of homes where the dad is physically present but not emotionally present because of the different things. Maybe he didn't grow up in a home where there was a healthy attachment, there's lots of reasons for it, but the fact is the addiction's on the rise that we're not gonna be able to live, that more men aren't showing up, and so I just I'm really curious. When you look at the contributing factors, I know that you're coming at it at least it seems like you're coming at it from the angle of we don't have moms that are really present with their kids, or moms are, you know, going to having to take on these other responsibilities going to work, sending their kids to daycare at an early age. When I look at this, my first reaction is, oh I, I feel like and I'm not saying you're wrong I'm actually asking a question like help me understand. Where do you think this plays a role? Like how does the the, the fatherlessness, or the addiction that men are struggling with so much.
Speaker 1:How do you feel like that's factoring into this massive equation? Because I feel like and I get a lot of pushback from this I feel like when a father's home and present, it allows the wife to really focus on nurturing, on doing what a woman was designed to do. And I'm not at all saying a woman can't lead a business or can't preach at a church or can't have big ambitions. I just think that one of her main roles was that nurture was that To be a mother.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to be a mother in motherly, so I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that.
Speaker 3:Well, the truth is that mothers and fathers are both necessary for children, and that's a very politically incorrect thing to say in a society which actually denies that either is important at this point.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:You know that in a society that thinks that children can be raised in institutional daycare. So mothers are critical because they do a number of important things. They help to regulate certain emotions. So children are not born with the ability to regulate their emotions. They're actually born very dysregulated and it's only through the interaction with their parents I mean primarily their primary attachment figure in the beginning, their mother that they learn to regulate emotions like distress, sadness, fear. With fathers they learn to regulate excitement and aggression.
Speaker 1:Wow, I love that.
Speaker 3:And so there's a lot of research to show that when mothers are unavailable and fathers raise children, that it's a different kind of nurturing because fathers and mothers both produce oxytocin, which is the love hormone. It's a neurotransmitter that's related to attachment behaviors, but mothers produce more of it and it comes from a certain part of their brain that actually makes their behavior more sensitive and empathic. So if the baby is hurt and in distress, the mother is very vigilant to that distress and soothing and calming that distress. The father, when he produces oxytocin, it comes from a different part of his brain and it makes him more of a playful, tactile stimulator of babies. And that play, which is critical for babies and babies who don't have fathers don't have this same kind of interaction. That play helps particularly little boys but little girls, to learn to regulate aggression, and it's been shown that little boys without fathers have higher levels of behavioral problems and aggression in school, and you know. So the idea is that both are important and neither should be treated as secondary.
Speaker 3:There are different times and different roles for that timing meaning in the very early days of a baby's life, the sensitive, empathic nurturing of the mother is the most important right.
Speaker 3:So those first weeks, months and even years, but as a child becomes a toddler.
Speaker 3:So meaning a father loving and nurturing and holding and diapering and bathing a baby although it's a modern concept is a wonderful concept because that father can also bond with the baby.
Speaker 3:But even if the father bonds with the baby, he has a different relationship with that baby than the mother, biologically right. And so when the baby becomes a toddler, the father's role picks up because separation starts to happen and fathers help with separation. So mothers who are raising children alone have a harder time. Even if they're wonderful mothers and they have great attachment security, they have a much harder time helping their children to separate because fathers are also not only the objects of play but also help with the separation process. They help children to learn to explore and take risks and, you know, be outward facing in the world. Now, even though toddlers will do what we call rapprochement, which is they go back to touch base with the mothers for security, they go back out with an eye to the father to explore the world. Both these roles are very important and when we diminish either role, or either gender, either parent.
Speaker 3:We are doing children a great disservice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like to label as progression. Cultural progression has caused a real regression in some of the healthy development in our children, which is obviously a huge concern. As anybody that cares about a future generation, anybody that cares about the health and thriving of your children's children, this is a concern. So I think it causes us to stop and take stock, really consider what some of our cultural progressions are costing our children primarily and I wonder if we could talk for a moment about gosh. Okay, so we're thinking about this age range, specifically the age range of zero to three, the critical role of both mother and father, but this primary attachment being ultimately what sets our children up from the very beginning for either an emotionally healthy or unhealthy childhood and adulthood. So that's my word that that is a sobering reality as a mother, to consider how deeply important my role is. And yet we're in this cultural landscape where we're really challenged, probably to live the way that you describe is ultimately ideal for our kids. Um is ultimately ideal for our kids.
Speaker 2:I've, you know, in listening to some of your other podcasts and and doing some reading um on social media, I'm challenged. I'm challenged by and provoked when I hear about the quantity of time, the, the being there that we we should prioritize in our children ages zero to three. Um, let's say we're talking to one of those overburdened moms we were talking about. Maybe she's overburdened because there's not a dad in the home, or maybe she's overburdened because of whatever list of responsibilities she has in her life. What does a mom do who is overburdened or overworked or overpressured and isn't actually doesn't feel like it's possible for her to spend the kind of devoted time that is ideal for her children in those early years?
Speaker 3:So understand that these roles, the role of being a mother, is not a societal construct. So first we have to take that off the table and say it's a biological construct.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And I think modern society would like to make the roles of mothers and fathers into societal constructs, like masculinity and femininity are supposed to be, now, societal constructs. There may be some aspects of it that are societal, but there's a biological construct. We're mammals. Mammals who are male and female play different roles in terms of raising their young. So first you have to take that off the table.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:And say that what's changed is that society has gotten much more complicated for mothers to mother.
Speaker 3:I've just recently started an organization, a nonprofit, called Attachment Circles which is so new that the website isn't even up and running, but it is running in every other way. But it is an organization which is meant to bring together mothers and or fathers who are raising their children as primary attachment figures together, because I will tell you that nurturers feel isolated and marginalized, whether they are mothers or fathers, in a society which does not value nurturing but values outward looking, career achievement and financial and material remuneration, and so children have been all but left behind and the people who care for them all but left behind Interesting. So my idea was to create a platform where mothers could find each other in cities and create in-person communities, because they're isolated and they can't. They go to the playground and there's no other parents there, just babysitters, if there are any children there at all, because children are being put into daycare. So, um, you know the?
Speaker 3:The idea is that parenting is not a societal construct. So when mothers are unhappy, it means that we have done something. Okay, I will say this that just because we can doesn't mean we should. Just because we call it modern doesn't mean it's better for us modern doesn't mean it's better for us.
Speaker 3:There are some aspects of society that we've inherited biologically and even societally that were good for us, and so it's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Of course, these movements the me movement, the feminist movement they gave people more choices and that's important, that women had choices, or that women knew that they could have careers and use their minds in different ways, and this is all very important. But the fact that you know, when adolescents are first individuating, separating and individuating from their parents, they cast away, they throw away every aspect of their parents. They say you know, I'm nothing like my parents, I want nothing of my parents, I want nothing of my inheritance, I'm all new, I'm brand new. Then, as they mature, they realize that it's not about rejecting everything that you've been given. It's about integrating who you are with what you've been given, and so what we haven't done as a society is integrated well, the modern changes by also embracing what's part of our inheritance that was also important and good for children and mothers and fathers.
Speaker 1:It's really profound. I mean, what you're talking about really is profound, and I love what you're doing with creating spaces for connection. Really, I mean, what we're talking about is connection, and I think so many people don't understand what connection really feels like in our society. I mean, people are so desperately lonely. Some of that's the pandemic, but most of it's how we're living, right, we look at men. If I just look at men, men are desperately lonely, and I have all these programs, we have all these programs for men, and what they really need most is someone that believes in them, loves them, cares for them, teaches them how to do emotion-based communication right, not just facts.
Speaker 1:And women are largely in the same boat, right, desperately lonely, and we don't have to borrow sugar from our neighbors anymore, or flour or butter, or we don't have to interact with society, because we can get everything that we need on our own, and it just leaves us incredibly malnourished, like our food system as well. We have a very modern food system that we won't talk about a lot on here, but I'm just painting a parallel of it seems like it should be better, and yet we're getting diseases from our modern food, and so I just I love what you're doing in bringing people back to the core of how human beings were designed to live. We're designed to live in community.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's great. It's great, it's so helpful.
Speaker 3:That woman that you're describing who's at home and feeling overwhelmed. I mean we never raised children in isolation. We always raised children in communities, and that meant extended family, family, extended family, friends who are like family, and so we don't live near our families, we don't live with our families, because it's been so overly valued to be independent and live far away from our families and be totally separate from our families, and so we've destroyed the bonds and the sense of completion that you got from having a support system. So that woman who's sitting at home and is bored or overwhelmed, I mean that's a phenomenon that is part of the deconstructing of the structure of society.
Speaker 3:She is the victim of that deconstruction. She may also be the benefactor of a society that allows women all of these choices, but she's also the victim of the deconstructing of the nurturing parts of society.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is such an important conversation um erica. I've heard you talk on other podcasts about uh women. Considering all that has been said so far, there's still a a limited capacity for people, for mothers, to hear the message that your kids actually need more of you instead of less of you women are are all across the United States are going.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I know I, even you know we have. So we have three adult children who I inherited as a step-mom about four, 14 years ago, and we've raised those kiddos and they're out of the house and they're thriving, and then we've got a four-year-old and a two-year-old and so we're kind of spanning the spectrums here in our parenting journey and learning as we go with each child. But as a mom with littles I haven't had a salary job since my son was born. But even as a mom who, let's say comparatively, I spend many more hours with my children than some of my friends, even who are full-time at work or who have, I can think of a couple of nurse friends who've got these wild 12-hour shifts and things like that. So I'm home a lot. Yet I was telling Jason, I was like gosh, that when I listen to these statistics that you present, when I hear the research, when I see how everything you're saying, I can see how it's playing out in front of me.
Speaker 2:This is plain as day. It feels very clear to me. I'm like struggle to feel the suffocation of like, oh my gosh, I thought I was raising this like resilient child who knows what to do when I'm not around, and then I have you in my head going. Resilience is built in our children, while when they have absolute, you know safety in their connection with their primary caregiver and all these things. So when I think about the concept of mom guilt, we'll label it mom guilt because that's a very commonly used phrase. Every mom out there knows the feeling and every mom out there knows what we're talking about when we say mom guilt. I've heard you say to press into that and it's a challenge, but I hear that it's a solution to our problem. Could you kind of expound a little bit on your thoughts on mom guilt?
Speaker 3:Yeah, let's redefine what guilt means. Guilt means that you feel internal conflict, so let's call it mom conflict. Good, that's what it is Right.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 3:Guilt has been used and like a weapon and weapon and is talked about as if it's all bad. It's just conflict, and conflict is important to address, not, you know, if you go to bed. My mother used to say never go to bed angry with your spouse. You know the idea that if you have conflict you need to talk about it. You need to resolve it.
Speaker 3:You need to work it through. So what we've done now for the last 75 years is encourage women to be conflict avoidant, to turn away from their conflicts and their fears and their anxiety and their depression, to be honest, because a lot of that fear comes from having been raised by mothers who also had fears and who also had anxiety and may have also been avoidant, and so that's what we call generational expression, right of postpartum depression, of postpartum anxiety. What's really happening is that we don't encourage women and men to look at their conflicts. If you feel conflicted about leaving your very, very young child, who desperately needs you, in my opinion, that's a sign of health Right. If you feel nothing when you turn away from your neonate, who is all but a baby, who probably shouldn't be born for another year, and you leave them in daycare at six weeks old and you're feeling your heart is wrenching, that's a sign that your conscience is working.
Speaker 3:We don't want to discourage women and men from feeling that You're basically encouraging them in terms of being empathically impaired. You're basically encouraging empathic impairment, right. Instead, we want to say look, maybe sometimes you have to work. Push it off as long as you can, do it as minimally as you can and have the most materially minimally fulfilling life you can. In the years when you're raising children, knowing you have a full life ahead of you, when you can have more stuff, more vacations, a bigger house, nice new clothes every year, do what you can to take things off the table, so you can be as available.
Speaker 3:Maybe that means you still have to work, but maybe you only have to work 25 hours. Maybe you don't go out at night. Maybe, instead of giving your child to a daycare institutional center because that's what it is, it's institutionalizing children. Institutional center because that's what it is, it's institutionalizing children you find your mother takes care of your child while you're gone kinship bonds, or your next door neighbor who's like an aunt, so you're not leaving your child in an institutional setting when your child is all but lost and frightened and forlorn. And so, yes, I mean, is it a good thing to feel conflict when you leave a neonate? Yes, indeed, it's quite a healthy feeling and that feeling may get resolved in many ways.
Speaker 3:You may decide I want to take more time away from my work. You may decide I have to work just to keep a roof over our head, but I'm going to choose the kind of care for my child that's going to be healthier. You know we all have choices. We don't all have the same choices socioeconomically and I'm sensitive to that. But we are not telling parents the truth. The truth is that your zero to three child needs you more than I can put into words and that when you leave them in daycare or with others for long periods of time, you're doing both your children and yourself great harm, because the saying goes you are only as happy as your least happy child. And the uptick in things like behavioral problems, depression, anxiety, adhd, these are all very much again, it's multivariable, but many of them are very much connected to the way we're raising children today.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know that A lot of what I think has to change in our society is what we're aiming at as a society and we talked about it in the very beginning, but I want to bring that back around is what gets placed in front of us as a really great life is that padded bank account is the extra and climbing the successful ladder for women and for men, and we feel really accomplished when we reach those mile markers. And I do see a shift in society, especially amongst men my age, where they're starting to go. The real flex is time off. The real flex is being able to control your time. How much time do I actually own? How much time am I able to spend at home? I have a lot of friends right now.
Speaker 1:I was going to have a guy on my podcast recently where his whole thing, his whole goal, is to work as little as possible, to spend as much time at home, and I'm starting to see a shift in men, as people like you and other people are starting to talk about what's happening in our kids and we're starting to experience it as well. Like Oren and I said, our parents didn't talk about the things that we talk about today. A simple example we didn't talk about what oh gosh, what trauma was for years. I mean, my parents never talked about trauma. I went through so many traumatic experiences as a kid and we just didn't have language for it.
Speaker 1:And I love the message that you're starting to send, which is even though we don't like to hear it, even though it doesn't feel comfortable, even though it feels challenging hearing the truth about what our kids need and what we need in order to live a healthy life what ultimately creates happiness I think that's what we're really talking about is what ultimately creates happiness. At the end of the day, if you have everything but you don't have a healthy family unit, you don't have healthy connection, you don't have kids that are regulated and feel safe and bonded, then you don't, actually you're not going to arrive at a place that's really happy, that's really satisfying, that feels great, it's true, it's a challenge.
Speaker 2:It is true, it's a challenge, it is true. So, erica, my question for you is and and I'll ask this question, understanding that you know a lot of moms that are going to be listening to this podcast, or you know a lot of moms right now they're probably many people are well past that three year window, you know, and we've either hit the mark or we've totally missed the mark.
Speaker 1:It's such a short window.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a short window. So you know you think you're doing. Most moms really want to do their best and yet we arrive at these places where we're like, wow, shoot, if I could only do that over again, I'd probably let that baby sleep with me a little bit more often. I probably wouldn't have pushed quite so hard for independence so early. You know things like that. What do you?
Speaker 2:How do you coach parents who, um, they may have, they may be in that boat of like feeling some regret about how they prioritized withness in that, in that zero to three window? Um, how do you shore up deficiencies in kids Like, what, what is the? How do we help repair even some of the things that might have been lost or hate to say the word, damaged? But you feel that as a mom, like, have I ruined my child? I have a sensitive child. I only know now that she's very sensitive. I would have handled her so differently. I thought she was an easy baby. I was sure that she's bright, she's brilliant actually, and yet very sensitive. And so I'm working, now that she's four, to actually repair and yet very sensitive. And so, you know, I'm working, now that she's four, to actually repair some things that I know I did not help her with when she was two. But what? How do you? How do you coach mothers in this who feel that sense of regret or like, oh gosh, what have I done?
Speaker 3:Well, I wrote the second book. The original title of Chicken Little Chicken Little is, you know, is the title the publisher gave it. But the original title, the working title, was Second Chances.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's go.
Speaker 3:The first critical period of development, brain development zero to three is when the brain is in a period of what we call neurogenesis. The cells are growing and growing. So by three years of age 85% of the right brain is developed. Then we know that it overgrows like a garden that overgrows and it needs to be pruned. And adolescence is the pruning period. So if you're not present enough, there aren't enough cells to prune. But if you grow a lot of cells and then adolescence comes, you have to prune them back because the pruning is almost as important as the cell growth right Interesting.
Speaker 3:And so it means that the brain is again susceptible to environmental influences, which is you. I mean again, an adolescent has more than you. A zero to three baby has only you. But an adolescent has their peer group has you, has teachers and coaches, their other influences, but you're still very, very important. What we know is that children who don't get their needs met in the early years, they don't keep progressing. In a certain way they seem like they have but they don't. It would be like if you went to a restaurant and you sat down and they served you like nouvelle cuisine, like three peas and one bite of chicken, and they said that's dinner. And you said I'm not leaving until I get or bring me more food. I'm not leaving this table till I get the food, till I'm satisfied.
Speaker 3:What it's like for children they don't really leave until they get what they need. So it means in adolescence and throughout childhood, whatever point you're listening to this podcast, at whatever point you're at, while your children are still living home with you, because that's the real marker you can't be there emotionally if you're not there physically. But until they're 18 and they leave, right, you have an opportunity to feed them.
Speaker 3:That's my metaphor At any point, you can bring more food to the table and feed them, because they're hungry and their way of showing hunger is ADHD, it's behavioral problems, it's depression, it's anxiety, it's a kind of emotional hunger and they're waiting to be fed. So at any point you can bring more food to the table.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:That's so helpful. You know we because I mean, jason's been a dad for many years now. I came in a little bit later into the game with our big kids, but most of my peers, you know I had older children while my peers had babies, and now we're doing. You know we're in the opposite season where my peers have, you know, junior high schoolers and I'm back to toddlers. So we have a, we have funny chats, but I remember in those years when they are you, they are struggling with wakeful nights and they are looking for mom companionship and somebody to share the joys and the sorrows of new momhood.
Speaker 2:I remember saying things to them like girls, teenagers do not need you any less than your toddlers do. I can tell you right now your teenagers do not need you less and it is a myth that as your children grow and enter junior, high and high school that you know they, yes, they become more independent. Independence is a developmental phase, but the the lie is that your children need you less as they get older and I love that you. I love I mean thank you that there is a second chance right, that there are opportunities in our children's growing up years where we have the opportunity to feed them or to be there with them, and I do imagine that the great challenge ahead of us is that, you know, parents today can make the changes that they can make, can make the investments that they can make.
Speaker 2:I think we're also talking about, potentially even more importantly, a future generation, because moms are moms today, are moms today. We're doing what we're doing when we're doing it, but I think that if we can aim, if we, if we can even help a little bit, steer culture, steer society, steer ambition towards raising healthy, happy families, um, for future generations I mean, I don't know if there's anything much more important than that at the moment, and I would be really curious, um, if you have any thoughts on how to make more macro change. Like, what do we do? How do we? How to make more macro change? Like, what do we do? What do we do to make more macro change?
Speaker 3:I want to bring up a myth. There's a myth that women didn't use their brains when they were staying at home. Absolutely, this is a myth because raising children is an incredibly all-consuming, full-on, executive functioning kind of interface, and so it requires an emotional intelligence and a level of intelligence and executive that most jobs out in the world do not. But also the reality is, most women didn't just sit around and play with their children. They were entrepreneurial. They were selling eggs, they were selling honey, they were doing Tupperware parties to make the extra money to pay for Johnny's braces.
Speaker 3:They were getting women together in cooperatives where they would sell baked goods to support their local church. They were involved in charities, they were involved. So this strange idea that women were not productive, were not productive members of society, were not valuable, were not entrepreneurial, no, they weren't making a lot of money for their. I mean, tupperware was Avon, ladies were. I mean, women have been working for thousands of years from home and raising children, primarily.
Speaker 3:So there's a myth that if you stay at home, you're useless, a useless member of society and not entrepreneurial right.
Speaker 3:And this is baloney, absolute baloney, and so when I hear it I get angry, because it was a myth that said that there's certain types of work that are more valuable to society than other types of work, work that are more valuable to society than other types of work. Who is the arbiter of deciding that? Being a lawyer or a banker or a doctor, who is the arbiter that said that those professions are more important than mothering right? Yes, that if you had a business outside and left your children, that if you had a business outside and left your children, that somehow you were more valuable. So that's a myth we have to get rid of and say that probably the most valuable work is nurturing work, and I'm not just going to say that in regards to children, I'm going to say that in regards to your parents or your elderly aunt or you know the idea that caretaking has been reduced to useless work that we delegate to poorly paid employees who we don't respect.
Speaker 3:That's what's happened to society. So we have to turn the tide of society. I mean we have to make mothers and caretakers and nurturers feel valuable again. We have to make them feel as if their contribution to society is the most important contribution.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and my goodness, I mean. What society will we have if we do not have emotionally healthy children who grow into emotionally healthy adults who can run future societies? I mean my word. What more important work is there really?
Speaker 3:Well, I don't know, you're too young to know the movie Logan's Run, but maybe you do know it from I don't. Oh, check it out.
Speaker 3:So, Logan's Run was a movie about how, when you reached a certain age maybe it was a little young and the young, so when you reached middle age, they basically got rid of you. You went to this big fall and they just eliminated you. You know, and and um, but the idea is, in a way it is a sort of strange modernistic, post-apocalyptic society, when we farm our very young, fragile children out to institutions to raise them and when we take our elderly and, like the Inuits, chip them off and send them on a block of ice to a nursing home and say you're useless. On a block of ice to a nursing home and say you're useless, we don't want to see you age and die and we don't want to care for you. So we've already become a very strange society, not a healthy, relational or normal feeling society.
Speaker 2:Yes. Well, the hope and prayer is that, through your work and people like you and, god willing, our work and people like us who care about relational health, that we could see some of those tides change in the next decades would be nothing short of fulfilling.
Speaker 1:I mean, honestly, this is why we prioritize building a marriage that you love. It's why we prioritize taking a hard look at your life and reflecting back and going what do I need to change? I mean it's valuing real deep connection. It's working on your past. It's working on those places in your life where you feel hurt and lost and lonely and broken. I mean all those things are so important, right, because it all adds up to either a life that you really, really love and enjoy and are proud of, or a life that you're trying to run from. And yeah, there's so many. I wish we had more time. There's so much in this and I'm just so thankful, erica, that you came on.
Speaker 1:I'm thankful for your work. I love that you have put this in book form so people can go and study it and learn and really reflect and take a look at their life, and so thank you for coming on today and for giving us your time. What a gift, and I wish that you were a part of our family so we could hang out more.
Speaker 2:I probably have a hundred more questions or things to chat through.
Speaker 1:We'll have you back on at some point, but we'd love for our listeners to go and really check out your work. I know I'm going to get your book and your books.
Speaker 2:I'm excited to read the books.
Speaker 1:And just really study and look into it, and so where can people find you and find your work?
Speaker 3:wwwkomisarcom it's K-O-M-I-S-A-Rcom and on that website you can see all of my books and you can even get links to them. You can see the articles and the podcasts I've done and you can also make an appointment with me.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Thank you, Erica, for joining us. We appreciate you so much. Thanks for your time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:All right. Thank you guys so much for listening to this week's podcast. We really hope that it blessed you so much. And, on this subject, if you are interested in building a healthy, strong marriage, we have a marriage intensive that is happening February 10th. It's six weeks. It is virtual, so if you're interested in that, you can go check it out at jasonandlaurenvalentinecom. Otherwise, have an incredible week. We will see you next week at Bates, mates and Babies with the Valetines. You