Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you. From how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Caroline and I'm Crispin. And we wanted to celebrate International
Speaker 1: Children's Day, that is June one, and to do that
Speaker 1: to celebrate children, we wanted to take a look at imagination.
Speaker 1: And I realized that seems like a big nebulous topic,
Speaker 1: and you're so right, it is. If you try to
Speaker 1: research imagination hypothetically, if you're trying to research it for
Speaker 1: anything like a podcast, there is a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: out there. Something that I was really hoping to find
Speaker 1: in our research was why when you're a kid, does
Speaker 1: everything seem so amazing, like so big and awesome, like
Speaker 1: awesome in the mount every sense of the word awesome,
Speaker 1: not just like awesome, Like why does everything seems so
Speaker 1: full of life, so full of color? And around the
Speaker 1: time you hit puberty, you're like, everything is awful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not just hormones. But before we get into
Speaker 1: the psychology and the science of children's imagination, because there
Speaker 1: really is a lot of fascinating stuff to talk about,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, Caroline, my favorite part of all
Speaker 1: of this research was the immediate chain of emails that
Speaker 1: you and I started bouncing off each other as soon
Speaker 1: as we You just mentioned imagination, and it was late
Speaker 1: in the afternoon, so I think we were probably both
Speaker 1: a little bit brain fried, and we just got swept
Speaker 1: away into this revelry of our child Our own childhood
Speaker 1: imaginations for me, instantly reminded me of being in this
Speaker 1: antique wardrobe that my parents had in our basement when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, and I was a huge fan
Speaker 1: of the Chronicles of Narnia and Caroline. I can't tell
Speaker 1: you how many times I stood in that wardrobe just
Speaker 1: waiting to see if I was going to be able
Speaker 1: to cross through the other side. Like I knew. Part
Speaker 1: of me knew it was really foolish. Part of me
Speaker 1: knew it was never going to happen, but there was
Speaker 1: still enough of me that thought, you know what, it could,
Speaker 1: Maybe it could. Yeah, I um, I mean there there's
Speaker 1: so many examples of me just you know, being a kid.
Speaker 1: But I was a big Barbie player. I feel like
Speaker 1: I've talked about this before, but I was hugely into
Speaker 1: creating these worlds and adventures for my Barbie dolls, and
Speaker 1: it was so real and they were they were real
Speaker 1: and they were having these relationships and doing these things,
Speaker 1: and Skipper was going to a party, um, and and
Speaker 1: Kiro was swimming in the pool. That's really my sink um.
Speaker 1: Kira had a great bathing suit. By the way, I'm
Speaker 1: just like remembering all these also that I had that
Speaker 1: I loved. But um, I I distinctly remember that that
Speaker 1: utter like joy and that super deep mental involvement in
Speaker 1: imagining that those relationships. I just remember that just completely
Speaker 1: petering out as puberty approached and being like, well, this
Speaker 1: is really this is what am I? What am I doing?
Speaker 1: I could go like play outside to read a book
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, that sensation of getting completely lost in
Speaker 1: an imaginary world when you're a child, where hours are
Speaker 1: just I mean they just evaporate because you're so involved
Speaker 1: in creating not only just building up this world but
Speaker 1: then living in it. I also remember there would be
Speaker 1: days when I would wake up excited because I knew
Speaker 1: I had a lot of playtime that day and I
Speaker 1: had already kind of built up maybe a world in
Speaker 1: my playroom, and I was gonna just gonna go straight there.
Speaker 1: I knew I was gonna have a great time because
Speaker 1: no one could stop me. Literally, no one could stop
Speaker 1: me except for whatever villains that I would make up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I would create these own little worlds for myself,
Speaker 1: separate from the barbies. You know. I would play like
Speaker 1: chocolate Factory in the backyard, which is really just making
Speaker 1: mud pies in my sandbox toys. And uh. We had
Speaker 1: a room over the garage that was unfinished, and my
Speaker 1: parents just stored a lot of junk up there, a
Speaker 1: lot of my brothers junk from college. And so I
Speaker 1: would go up there and like turn it into an apartment,
Speaker 1: you know, so much fun. And I would like stack things.
Speaker 1: And my brother had this like giant old eighties boom box,
Speaker 1: and I would like turn it on and be rocking
Speaker 1: out up there, and I'd sweep and I'd draw with
Speaker 1: chalk on the plywood, and I was like, this is
Speaker 1: my apartment. I'm an independent woman. Yeah. I had a
Speaker 1: fort that I built with my sister that I very
Speaker 1: much enjoyed tidying up, which I think was a precursor
Speaker 1: to my dishwasher um o c du nous as an adult.
Speaker 1: So while I would honestly love to spend the next
Speaker 1: half hour just telling you every thing that I pretended
Speaker 1: to be as a kid. Let's talk about the origins
Speaker 1: of investigation into childhood imagination. Who first started thinking, hey, kids,
Speaker 1: kids have those cookie brains right? Well, you you have
Speaker 1: to think about it first in the context of winded
Speaker 1: childhood emerge, because it's not like childhood was always protected
Speaker 1: and valued as a sacred time of learning and growth. No,
Speaker 1: children and their little fingers were sent to the factories
Speaker 1: to like scoop things out of looms and whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: child labor, etcetera, etcetera, with the industrial Revolution. But then
Speaker 1: you do start to have people who are like, no,
Speaker 1: if we want them to be amazing members of society
Speaker 1: when they grow up, they deserve to have this playtime,
Speaker 1: to have this innocence where they can learn and be safe.
Speaker 1: I just like condensed so much history and about two sentences.
Speaker 1: But as with a lot of things in psychology, a
Speaker 1: lot of this does go back to Freud. Freud sometimes
Speaker 1: the pipe is just a pipe. Okay, yes this is true,
Speaker 1: but anyway, my fort was just a force. It was
Speaker 1: just a FOURT that boom box was anyway. Anyway, Freud
Speaker 1: talks about how we all, all of us, not just children,
Speaker 1: have two different modes of thinking. But what's interesting is
Speaker 1: that he called our primary processes that was our dream life,
Speaker 1: in the secondary processes were our waking thought. You would
Speaker 1: almost think it would be the other way around. And
Speaker 1: he recognized that children did know the difference between reality
Speaker 1: and fantasy. It's not that, for instance, I literally thought
Speaker 1: that my you know, attic play place was my own apartment,
Speaker 1: and I didn't try to sleep there. I didn't try
Speaker 1: to eat the chocolate pie which was really mud because
Speaker 1: you mud, but um. He says that they do know
Speaker 1: the difference, but that they absolutely need play. And so
Speaker 1: Freud talks about how, look, kids take their play very seriously.
Speaker 1: It's not something that they consider to be frivolous. They
Speaker 1: it's like their livelihood. Like parents go to work, kids
Speaker 1: go play. And he talks about how they expend large
Speaker 1: amounts of emotion on it. And he so the opposite
Speaker 1: of play is not what is serious, but what is real.
Speaker 1: So he goes on to say he likes to link
Speaker 1: his imagine objects and situations to the tangible and visible
Speaker 1: things of the real world. So obviously, in other words,
Speaker 1: you have to know a thing or two about what's
Speaker 1: around you and how things work. And how people relate
Speaker 1: to each other to even begin to imagine and fantasize
Speaker 1: about other possibilities. Now, the other person who comes up
Speaker 1: in this conversation alongside Freud is psychologist Jane peg who
Speaker 1: developed another sort of school of thought around children's imaginations,
Speaker 1: and this was in the nineties and thirties, and PJA
Speaker 1: argued that something called magical thinking dominated children's imaginations. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it was a confusion around cause effect relation ships. So
Speaker 1: PJ argued that children believe their thoughts or actions can
Speaker 1: alter reality, that one object can influence another when there's
Speaker 1: really no logical causal relationship present, which makes sense because
Speaker 1: children simply don't know these logical causal relationships, and so
Speaker 1: they're sort of using fantasy and imagination to help explain
Speaker 1: the world around them. They just have the they just
Speaker 1: don't have a logic down yet, right. And one example
Speaker 1: given was like, obviously this wouldn't have been in PGA's time,
Speaker 1: but if a child walks by a stoplight and the
Speaker 1: stoplights suddenly turns green, they think, oh, well, because I
Speaker 1: walked by it it turned green. I employ magical thinking
Speaker 1: as a grown up when I yell at stop lights
Speaker 1: like durn green, won't you already? And then it does.
Speaker 1: I'm like, see see I get I bet you guys
Speaker 1: are glad I'm at this stoplight. But imagination, though, is
Speaker 1: more than fantasy, as more recent research has taught us,
Speaker 1: actually homes our childhood understandings of reality, because unlike the
Speaker 1: common line of thinking that well, imagination is just escapism,
Speaker 1: it's just children trying to, you know, escape into other worlds,
Speaker 1: whereas really it's sort of us sorting out this insane
Speaker 1: new space around us. So um, what's What's also interesting
Speaker 1: in this earlier history of the study of childhood imagination
Speaker 1: is that, in addition to Freud and Peja in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, we also have a pair of ladies psychologists
Speaker 1: who are influential as well in developing our modern ideas
Speaker 1: about the function of imagination. Right Naomi nors Worthy and
Speaker 1: Mary Theodora Whitley wrote The Psychology of Childhood, wherein they
Speaker 1: describe in in very big general terms but also very
Speaker 1: it's it's a gorgeously written thing from the twenties anyway,
Speaker 1: where they describe children's imaginations. And they wrote that from
Speaker 1: the ages of four to eight, stories and fairy tales
Speaker 1: were critical that they allowed kids imaginations a workout and
Speaker 1: that they absolutely filled a need. They wrote, the lack
Speaker 1: of knowledge of physical laws and the ways of the world,
Speaker 1: and the tendency towards animism make the material offered by
Speaker 1: the myth and fairy tale not only acceptable but necessary
Speaker 1: for a full growth. And so that's like what we've
Speaker 1: been saying, that this imagination, all this fantasy, all this
Speaker 1: imagining our barbies talking to each other is totally critical
Speaker 1: in kids basically accidentally performing the scientific method, putting a
Speaker 1: hypothesis or a theory out there about how things should work.
Speaker 1: After viewing their parents doing things, or their siblings doing things,
Speaker 1: or people the grocery store acting a certain way, they
Speaker 1: sort of put it all into practice during their playtime
Speaker 1: and using their imagination. Well, when you think about it
Speaker 1: at it's very basic level, science and imagination have a
Speaker 1: lot in common because science is all about coming up
Speaker 1: with hypotheses and you know, thinking about what we don't
Speaker 1: already know as fact, and then experimenting and experimenting until
Speaker 1: you continue to fail or eventually succeed. It takes a
Speaker 1: lot of imagination to be a scientist, and imagination as
Speaker 1: I'm sure we're all very well aware. Starts so early.
Speaker 1: Kids begin pretend play before they turn three, and the
Speaker 1: time that we spend pretending peaks during the preschool years
Speaker 1: and then decreases a little bit between five and eight
Speaker 1: years old. Right. And during this same time, our belief
Speaker 1: in our imaginary friends in Santa and other fantasy figures
Speaker 1: peaks as well. So it's not that you're not playing. Obviously,
Speaker 1: nine year olds still play, it's that it's that whole
Speaker 1: pretend play, that imaginary friend type of things starts to decrease. Um.
Speaker 1: In that same period, kids strongly believe in wishing from
Speaker 1: three to six, This would I think tie into that
Speaker 1: whole magical thinking thing. Um. But as they hit that's
Speaker 1: six year old mark, that belief starts to diminish. They tend, though,
Speaker 1: from then on, to see it as something that's a combination,
Speaker 1: adorably of magic and mental ability and skill. So it's like, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: I get that wishing isn't a thing that makes things
Speaker 1: appear in front of me, Like I can't wish for
Speaker 1: a sandwich and it suddenly appears in front of me,
Speaker 1: God forbid. But maybe if I'm like really good at it,
Speaker 1: and I wish really hard in the universe or God
Speaker 1: or whoever like really hears me, then it can happen.
Speaker 1: I feel like I still think like that sometimes. I know,
Speaker 1: I'm like, maybe if I just tell them how much
Speaker 1: I want a sandwich delivered up, it does feel like magic.
Speaker 1: Side note, when I walk into the break room and
Speaker 1: there's a platter of surprise sandwiches or cupcakes, I know.
Speaker 1: I love when meetings get out the food from meetings
Speaker 1: is presented to the rest of the people. So, you know,
Speaker 1: all this stuff about treating imagination as like kids using
Speaker 1: the scientific method is are of a recent development. UM
Speaker 1: researchers and child development experts are just starting to realize
Speaker 1: how much of a role it plays in understanding reality.
Speaker 1: And there was an article about this in the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal back in two thousand nine that talks about
Speaker 1: how imagination is necessary for learning about people and events
Speaker 1: we don't directly experience. Think about history class, you weren't
Speaker 1: around or I don't think you were in ancient Rome.
Speaker 1: How are you ever supposed to figure out what that
Speaker 1: was like? You take what you know, what your teacher
Speaker 1: tells you, what your parents tell you, and you imagine
Speaker 1: it and so for young kids, this allows them to
Speaker 1: think about the future, like what they want to be
Speaker 1: when they grow up. And Paul Harris, who's a development
Speaker 1: psychologist and a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Speaker 1: said the imagination is absolutely vital for contemplating reality, not
Speaker 1: just for those things we take to be mere fantasy.
Speaker 1: And speaking of mere fantasy, let's talk for a minute
Speaker 1: about imaginary friends, because as an example of how fantasy
Speaker 1: play helps kids, research suggests that preschool kids with imaginary
Speaker 1: friends tend to be more creative, have greater social understanding,
Speaker 1: and are better at taking the perspective of others. In
Speaker 1: other words, creating this fake, invisible friend develops empathy within kids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you you sort of work out your social problems this
Speaker 1: friend that you can blame everything on. Well, and there's
Speaker 1: more research too that's found that the more a kid
Speaker 1: pretends and engages in fantasy play, the better their verbal
Speaker 1: skills are too. Right, Yeah, and it's the same thing
Speaker 1: because we did talk about this in our episode on
Speaker 1: imaginary friends, and the same thing is true for like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know people who also play with dolls. So
Speaker 1: because you're creating these worlds in your head. You're flexing
Speaker 1: your creativity muscle, but you're also using your language skills,
Speaker 1: and so as you learn more words and more vocab,
Speaker 1: you're applying them to your pretend games. Yeah. And there
Speaker 1: was psychologist who was talking about how the assumption is
Speaker 1: that Sesame Street, for instance, is fantastic at developing kids
Speaker 1: verbal capabilities because it always focuses on specific words, specific letters,
Speaker 1: and sort of hammering home through repetition these very basic
Speaker 1: building blocks of speech. But in fact, what's even better
Speaker 1: than Sesame Street is playing with big bird on your
Speaker 1: own or or it doesn't have to be a big bird,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Um. And in addition to
Speaker 1: things like the verbal skills, when you encourage imagination and kids, again,
Speaker 1: research goes on to find that it helps them develop
Speaker 1: those social skills, boost their self confidence, boost intellectual growth.
Speaker 1: It's the beginning really of abstract thought. And it also
Speaker 1: this was one that really jumped out to me, it
Speaker 1: helps kids sort of manage their fears. Yeah, and um,
Speaker 1: if we're talking, you know, beyond if we're going beyond
Speaker 1: imagining friends, just talking about fantasy and pretend play in general.
Speaker 1: A lot of the examples are heights for instance, if
Speaker 1: you had a tree house and you were allowed to
Speaker 1: play in this big tree house. And this is something
Speaker 1: we'll talk about a little bit later. For we're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, our overprotective parents affecting imagination. But kids who
Speaker 1: got to play up high in tree houses or whatever,
Speaker 1: when they grow up, it's sort of like they're desensitized
Speaker 1: to it, and so their fear of heights is a
Speaker 1: lot less. Or you know, if you're like me and
Speaker 1: your dad built you like a treehouse play for a
Speaker 1: thing that also included swings, you would have worked out
Speaker 1: your fear of falling off those swings by falling off
Speaker 1: the swings and landing in the gravel and being like, man,
Speaker 1: I'm never doing that again. See I'm the opposite. I
Speaker 1: have a pretty strong fear of heights and just in general,
Speaker 1: a fear of hurting myself. And we didn't have a
Speaker 1: treehouse growing up. We had a climbing tree, but it
Speaker 1: had this one it went into a be It was
Speaker 1: like a y shaped tree, and so there was we
Speaker 1: had this little plank of wood in the middle of
Speaker 1: the y, and but I was always so scared to
Speaker 1: even climb up there. And I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was because my mom always told me to be careful,
Speaker 1: you don't want to hurt yourself. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I got too many of those kinds of messages, or
Speaker 1: maybe maybe I'm just a fraidy cat. Well, let's be clear.
Speaker 1: My treehouse was way different from the neighbor boys treehouse,
Speaker 1: which was like a death trap, because mine wasn't literally
Speaker 1: a treehouse. It was like this huge structure that my
Speaker 1: dad built. It was like a fort on top and
Speaker 1: a standbock sandbox on the bottom, and these like really
Speaker 1: scary I don't know what kind of boards they were,
Speaker 1: but they were the square cube kind of long birth
Speaker 1: but anyway, basically my leg could go through it and
Speaker 1: I could like slice the entire front of my shin off.
Speaker 1: But at least I had steps. My neighbor's tree house
Speaker 1: was literally a treehouse where you had like climb part
Speaker 1: of a tree and then climb these rickety boards that
Speaker 1: they just nailed into the trunk. And I ended up
Speaker 1: there one day and I was stuck because I was
Speaker 1: terrified to come down. I was like, I'm gonna hurt
Speaker 1: myself and hurt myself, So are you scared of heights now?
Speaker 1: Middling middleish, probably less than I am. Like I'm not.
Speaker 1: I can go up high and be fine, but I'm
Speaker 1: more afraid of falling to my death. But actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: But speaking of kids coping with stress, as we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: there used to be there there. There's a common line
Speaker 1: of thought that, oh, well, imagination is just children's escapism
Speaker 1: from terrible surroundings, but it's not necessarily a coping mechanism
Speaker 1: for kids. Yeah. Psychology professor Alison gopnik Um, who focuses
Speaker 1: on children's development, wrote in Slate in two thousand five
Speaker 1: that happy, healthy children are, if anything, more likely to
Speaker 1: be immersed in a world of fantastic daydreams public or private,
Speaker 1: than unhappy were troubled children, which goes to the previous
Speaker 1: traditional line of thinking that, uh, fantasy and imagination are
Speaker 1: therapeutic and it's used as an escape to work out
Speaker 1: their problems, and it's not necessarily that they are electing
Speaker 1: fantasy over reality. What we we tend to forget as adults,
Speaker 1: even though we were once kids, is that kids can distinguish,
Speaker 1: usually between real and pretend. They're essentially just little sponges
Speaker 1: learning about life. I mean, they're they're inherently designed to learn,
Speaker 1: and so play and fantasy again is part of this
Speaker 1: protected period of childhood that allows kids to learn vital
Speaker 1: survival skills in a safer environment. And so you often
Speaker 1: have these comparisons of childhood imagination and fantasy play with
Speaker 1: dog and wolf pups play fighting, which is the cutest
Speaker 1: analogy possible. Yeah, I mean, like I grew up with
Speaker 1: with two little puppy sisters who would play fight all
Speaker 1: the time. And and and that's common in in animals. You
Speaker 1: you play fight, and you learn how to chase, and
Speaker 1: you learn how to go after food and foes, so
Speaker 1: that when you're actually a big grown up dog or
Speaker 1: wolf or whatever and you're out in the wild, um,
Speaker 1: that you know how to act and behave. And it's
Speaker 1: not really that different among human children. And I just wonder,
Speaker 1: like side note, I just wonder if it is that
Speaker 1: whole like sponge like thing about kids and their brains
Speaker 1: being designed to learn really taking shape during this age.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's why everything seems so awesome. Probably
Speaker 1: it's just like running through a sprinkler seems magical, or
Speaker 1: you know what I'm you know, So I just wonder
Speaker 1: if it's your brain being in its early stages of
Speaker 1: growth and spongy and whatever. But anyway, it's that whole
Speaker 1: thing that these kids kids are little theorists. They're learning
Speaker 1: how to explain the world or around us, and they're
Speaker 1: not constrained by the whole little issue of possibility, what's
Speaker 1: possible and what's probable like adults are like, I know
Speaker 1: what's possible and what's not, so my imagination maybe doesn't
Speaker 1: roam as far as a child who doesn't have any
Speaker 1: of those constraints. Well, one thing I wanted to look at, too,
Speaker 1: was whether or not there are gender differences in this
Speaker 1: kind in our sponge brains and how we use them
Speaker 1: to pretend. And uh, it's actually not that revelatory because
Speaker 1: essentially boys and girls are equally likely to engage in
Speaker 1: this quote unquote fantasy play, as academics call it, but
Speaker 1: there are some gender differences do or socialized gender differences
Speaker 1: do emerge. There was one study called the Reality of
Speaker 1: Pretend Play, Ethnic socioeconomic and gender variations in young children's involvement,
Speaker 1: and it found really no differences by stan ethnicity or
Speaker 1: socio economic levels, but there were a couple of gender
Speaker 1: variations that jumped out which were that girls tend to
Speaker 1: engage in more gender stereotypical activities and boys tend to
Speaker 1: go for more occupation related pretend So, in other words,
Speaker 1: girls like to play mother bride going grocery shopping, whereas
Speaker 1: boys are likelier to play say fireman or uh, tax auditor.
Speaker 1: Just kidding, no one plays tax auditor. No offense to
Speaker 1: the tax auditors listening. I played teacher, Oh I did.
Speaker 1: I did a little bit of teacher. I definitely did
Speaker 1: some nurse and some mom and also glamorous woman about
Speaker 1: to go on a date. That was when I started
Speaker 1: getting a little bit older. Did you see your older
Speaker 1: sisters like? No, honestly that I can tell you. One
Speaker 1: was from watching uh AMC when it was in its
Speaker 1: pre Madmen and Walking Dead days, and it was all
Speaker 1: classic movies with like Marilyn Monroe et cetera getting dressed
Speaker 1: up to go out on the town. And those were
Speaker 1: the those were the starlets that I looked up to,
Speaker 1: where the women who went to like the Cabana Club
Speaker 1: in a gown on a Friday night to meet a doctor.
Speaker 1: So it's funny that I do what I do now. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, podcasting is glamorous. It is glamorous, especially a
Speaker 1: feminist podcast. Um Oh, But one quick though side note
Speaker 1: in terms of imaginary friends and gender differences, Marjorie Taylor,
Speaker 1: who is a psychology professor at University of Oregon, found
Speaker 1: that girls are likelier to create imaginary companions, but boys
Speaker 1: are likelier to simply pretend to be characters. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, the the example that she gives is that
Speaker 1: a boy will just pretend that he's Batman, whereas a
Speaker 1: girl would pretend that Batman is her friend. Interesting, and
Speaker 1: they think that it ties into how girls also engage
Speaker 1: in socialized play a little bit younger ages than boys.
Speaker 1: We want to play with somebody, whereas boys tend to
Speaker 1: engage in solitary play for a little bit longer than
Speaker 1: girls do. So just a couple of gendered insights to
Speaker 1: toss into this imagination talk. Well, we have to take
Speaker 1: a quick break, but after we come back, I want
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about how kids imaginations are
Speaker 1: different from adults. So we'll be right back. So we
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time talking about kids and kids,
Speaker 1: fantasy play, and some gender differences. But how do kids
Speaker 1: imaginations differ from adults? Because even though perhaps the brilliance
Speaker 1: and shimmer of our childhood imagination fades with time and puberty,
Speaker 1: we still engage in magical thinking as adults. Yeah, going
Speaker 1: back to NYA me Norsworthy and Mary Whitley back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, they wrote early on that kids imaginations
Speaker 1: do differ in the kind, number, and vividness of images,
Speaker 1: and so this is really the only mention in all
Speaker 1: of our research I came across that really specified the
Speaker 1: vividness of imagination and the vividness of how the world
Speaker 1: appears around them. And they write that kids imagery is
Speaker 1: so intense that sometimes they can't tell the difference between
Speaker 1: imagination and memory, which of course made me pause, and
Speaker 1: I was like, how would I know? Because I have
Speaker 1: these imaginary things, but like, I don't remember. If I don't,
Speaker 1: I just don't know. How do you know? I don't know?
Speaker 1: But anyway, they write that kids lacked the definite criteria
Speaker 1: by which to judge either the actuality of occurrences or
Speaker 1: the possibility of their fancies, and that kids start to
Speaker 1: lose their more fanciful imagery around the ages of ten
Speaker 1: to thirteen, when it becomes more practical, more like adult,
Speaker 1: and that right there is probably the primary difference between
Speaker 1: adult imagination versus childhood imagination is that perhaps it loses
Speaker 1: the vividness because we have the logic, we understand, hopefully
Speaker 1: how the world works in a more fundamental and basic level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and maybe there's no need in our brains driving
Speaker 1: us anymore to pick up those Barbie dolls and imagine
Speaker 1: that they are in fact in Malibu with with palm
Speaker 1: trees all around them, and they're in their pink jeep. Instead,
Speaker 1: we just daydream that we ourselves are in Malibu. We
Speaker 1: sort of transfer it onto off of our dolls and
Speaker 1: onto our own selves while we're sitting in our cubicles
Speaker 1: imagining being on the beach all the time. Um. But
Speaker 1: one major name in child psychology, especially in terms of
Speaker 1: imagination is Jacqueline Wooly. She's a professor at u T Austin,
Speaker 1: and she has done a lot of studies in recent
Speaker 1: years on kids imaginations and on their fantasy play and
Speaker 1: on their various beliefs in magical characters. And one study
Speaker 1: that I thought was so interesting was talking to kids
Speaker 1: about Santa, the tooth Fairy, and the garbage Man. Basically
Speaker 1: to illustrate. They were trying to figure out at what
Speaker 1: point Because you don't really see the garbage man, John Garbageman,
Speaker 1: John Garbageman, you don't see him necessarily ride up to
Speaker 1: your house and take the garbage away. It's just gone.
Speaker 1: The garbage is just gone. Same with Santa. You don't
Speaker 1: see him, but you wake up on Christmas morning and
Speaker 1: you have presents and the cookies are gone. There's evidence.
Speaker 1: Evidence is the key in children, as Willie says, believing
Speaker 1: in these fantasy characters because like I, for instance, oh
Speaker 1: my god, did I believe in the Easter Bunny so hard?
Speaker 1: Because so like I was getting to an age where
Speaker 1: I was starting to question things, and I was like,
Speaker 1: does the Easter Bunny really exist? And we went to
Speaker 1: church on Easter morning and like, none of the chocolate
Speaker 1: was out, none of the eggs had been put out,
Speaker 1: And when we came back from church, Jesus had left it.
Speaker 1: All the candy was out. And I was like, you guys,
Speaker 1: the Easter Bunny is real. Here's all this evidence, which
Speaker 1: is adorable when I think about my younger self. But
Speaker 1: but how did I get there? Caroline? You know, I
Speaker 1: still don't know, And I bet I bet you a
Speaker 1: million dollars of someone else's money that if I asked
Speaker 1: my parents, they'd be like, I don't remember that it
Speaker 1: was it was the Garbageman. Um. And so she talks
Speaker 1: about how it's it's seven. Age seven is around the
Speaker 1: age where kids stop being quite as easily misled by
Speaker 1: adults persuasive words. So it's your dad convincing you that
Speaker 1: there's Santa, or your mom convincing you that there's the
Speaker 1: Easter Bunny and leaving that evidence, because even the tooth
Speaker 1: Fairy leaves money. Um. But there is a division to
Speaker 1: like a subdivision where they're more likely to believe in
Speaker 1: Santa because there's proof versus dragons or fairies, where kids
Speaker 1: kind of grasp that those are fantasy figures that they
Speaker 1: get to daydream about but that they won't necessarily meet well.
Speaker 1: And some other research that Willie and her students have
Speaker 1: done also found that five year olds in particular don't
Speaker 1: really understand the difference between what makes something impossible versus improbable.
Speaker 1: So they told a little girl that once upon a
Speaker 1: time there was another girl and she jumped up into
Speaker 1: the sky and she never came back. And they asked
Speaker 1: whether or not that was possible, and she said, no,
Speaker 1: that's completely impossible, because why would anyone want to jump
Speaker 1: into the sky and never see the clouds again? Like
Speaker 1: that was the reason why, because it would be foolish
Speaker 1: to ever not want to see the clouds, right, have
Speaker 1: foolish exactly, And I thought that was adorable to Yeah,
Speaker 1: because because obviously that's the only reason. Um, but you
Speaker 1: know there there's also links, uh of researchers looking in
Speaker 1: imagination and then things like autism and also anxiety, because
Speaker 1: while kids with autism don't necessarily play with toys or
Speaker 1: with people like they're typically developing peers do, that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they lack imagination. Researchers looking at Asperger's in particular,
Speaker 1: I found that kids with Asperger's still have a lot
Speaker 1: of creativity. It's just more reality based. It's not necessarily
Speaker 1: imaginative imaginative creativity. They gave them. This was a study
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Autism and Development Disorders from but
Speaker 1: they basically presented all these kids with foam shapes, and
Speaker 1: the neurotypical kids were able to come up with all
Speaker 1: like sorts of things that this could be, whereas the
Speaker 1: children with Asperger's. It was more cut and dry. They
Speaker 1: didn't come up with quite as many examples as the
Speaker 1: typically developing kids did. Yeah, but it is a bit
Speaker 1: of a myth that autistic kids have no imagination. UM,
Speaker 1: and that kind of started up in nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: when autism researchers Laurena Wing and Judith Gould included lack
Speaker 1: of imagination in early autism criteria. But then in a
Speaker 1: two thousand ten interview with Laura Wing, she clarified that
Speaker 1: it's more a deficit of social imagination, in other words,
Speaker 1: having a hard time imagining other people's perspectives and feelings,
Speaker 1: those kinds of things that kids develop via imaginary friends.
Speaker 1: A lot of times, for instance, they have a hard
Speaker 1: time with that and the empathy, the imagination required for empathy,
Speaker 1: rather than just the imagination we might think of in
Speaker 1: a more basic sense of playtime, drawing, imagining other worlds, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And as far as the anxiety thing goes, UM, it's
Speaker 1: interesting the links that have been drawn between kids with
Speaker 1: anxiety and kids who have super active imaginations. UM. Robin
Speaker 1: Alters a psychologist who focuses a lot on this. She
Speaker 1: wrote the book Anxiety and the Gift of imagination. But
Speaker 1: she talks about how she was seeing this girl in
Speaker 1: her office who was having stomach aches. Her parents didn't
Speaker 1: know what was wrong. The girl was super anxious, and
Speaker 1: as they were talking, it came out that she was
Speaker 1: an artist and she loved to paint and draw and
Speaker 1: put everything in these bright colors. And Alter asked her like,
Speaker 1: do you think there's a link between your feelings, how
Speaker 1: you're anxious all the time and your imagination all of
Speaker 1: these great vivid images you see all the time. And
Speaker 1: the both of them were like, huh, did we just
Speaker 1: have an epiphany together? Because Alter has drawn this link
Speaker 1: between people or children with superactive imaginations where they just
Speaker 1: feel that they are in this scenario, they're in this
Speaker 1: situation and it just starts to feel so real and
Speaker 1: so overwhelming. Well, and that sounds a lot like the
Speaker 1: anxiety spiral that can happen where you start imagining all
Speaker 1: of these events that have not occurred yet, you are
Speaker 1: engaging in some terrifying fantasy play. When anxiety can you know,
Speaker 1: really clamp down, like going to web m D. Yes, Caroline,
Speaker 1: like going to the web m D symptom checker. It's
Speaker 1: a terrible spot that's all I could think. Reading about
Speaker 1: imagination and anxiety. I was like, Oh my god, I
Speaker 1: just imagine all of this terrible stuff happening to me,
Speaker 1: because then I'm like, oh, look I have a new mall.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's cancer, you know, so I just
Speaker 1: it's always cancer. But um. One thing that we we
Speaker 1: hinted at at the beginning of the podcast was the
Speaker 1: idea of overprotective or helicopter parents limiting kids imagination and
Speaker 1: their capacity for developing more fantasy play. Whether that is
Speaker 1: in fact something that's going on. Yeah, because we know
Speaker 1: more than we ever did before about childhood development and
Speaker 1: what is good for kids. On top of that, we
Speaker 1: have a lot of technology, the reign of television in
Speaker 1: the home, and also, yes, this helicopter parenting where kids
Speaker 1: today are often kept very busy and very safe. Very
Speaker 1: good intention from these helicopter parents because they only want
Speaker 1: their precious angels to grow up and become Harvard superstars
Speaker 1: and and not you know, break bones and whatnot. But
Speaker 1: that might not be leaving so much time for imagination
Speaker 1: like it used to. Right. There was a report from
Speaker 1: the American Academy of Pediatrics in two thousand seven showing
Speaker 1: that children were playing less, and so you know, the
Speaker 1: Internet erupted with so many articles in different studies looking
Speaker 1: at like structured play versus imaginative play. So, you know,
Speaker 1: putting your kid in all those ballet classes, you know,
Speaker 1: soccer games, like all of these different you know, math bowl,
Speaker 1: whatever they participated in. That was good and it was
Speaker 1: helping them socialize and make friends, but it wasn't necessarily
Speaker 1: giving them enough time to have that independent, unstructured creativity
Speaker 1: that comes with just playing by yourself. Nonetheless, a study
Speaker 1: in two thousand well looking at this question of whether
Speaker 1: or not we are essentially tamping down too much on
Speaker 1: kids imaginations today. There was a two thousand twelve study
Speaker 1: published in the Creativity Research Journal, and it was led
Speaker 1: by Case Western Reserve University psychologists, and it was a
Speaker 1: meta analysis of fourteen play studies from to two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, and they really didn't find any red flags
Speaker 1: at all. They found that kids are still very comfortable
Speaker 1: playing and engaging in imagination, and they also found that
Speaker 1: kids today expressed less negative feelings in play. However, past
Speaker 1: studies have linked negative feelings during play with creativity. Again,
Speaker 1: is it that anxiety link? I don't know. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's that or if it's that play
Speaker 1: helps you work things out, Like you get so angry
Speaker 1: at Ken for forgetting Barbie's birthday party, and then so
Speaker 1: you work out those I don't know, or you fall down,
Speaker 1: or you fall down skin your knee and you're like, man,
Speaker 1: I'm angry because you know, when I did fall off
Speaker 1: the swing that time, I had a pudding pop in
Speaker 1: my hand, Like imagine little Caroline swinging on a swing
Speaker 1: with a pudding pop in her hand, and when I
Speaker 1: flew off the swing, I looked up and my pudding
Speaker 1: pop had flown all the way across the playground and
Speaker 1: hit the side of the house and it's just sliding
Speaker 1: down the house. That's a negative feeling. I'm like by
Speaker 1: pudding pop. No, but these case Western researchers found that
Speaker 1: kid's capacity to express a wide range of positive emotions,
Speaker 1: to tell stories, and to organize their thoughts stayed consistent
Speaker 1: over this whole time period. They did stress, however, despite
Speaker 1: all the positives, they found how important it is to
Speaker 1: make sure that you do give kids time for play
Speaker 1: since it helps all those things, the emotional things, the
Speaker 1: cognitive stuff that we talked about earlier well, and this
Speaker 1: ties into all the conversation around whether or not TV
Speaker 1: time or video game time is bad for kids imaginations.
Speaker 1: If you PLoP a kid down in front of a television,
Speaker 1: whether that is just sapping all of those potentially positive
Speaker 1: benefits of turning off the TV and sending the kid
Speaker 1: outside to build a ford or whatever, it might be
Speaker 1: right because then, as one person put it, I can't
Speaker 1: remember what article it was, but as one person put it,
Speaker 1: when you PLoP your kid down and let the TV
Speaker 1: be the babysitter, they can't be the hero of their
Speaker 1: own story. They're enveloped in someone else's story. And you know,
Speaker 1: while watching Peanuts when I was growing up was like
Speaker 1: my favorite thing, you know, I by watching that all
Speaker 1: the time, I wasn't doing something else like playing with
Speaker 1: barbies or playing outside the treehouse. Yeah, and I've I've
Speaker 1: noticed differences anecdotally speaking of kids that I know watch
Speaker 1: a lot of television versus kids that don't watch as much.
Speaker 1: And when you talk to a kid who watches a
Speaker 1: lot of television, a lot of what you hear from
Speaker 1: them is stuff that they watch on television, the jokes
Speaker 1: that they have are jokes that they saw on say
Speaker 1: the Disney Channel, compared to whatever kind of story they
Speaker 1: might have been writing, or whatever adventure they might have
Speaker 1: been off on on their own. I will say though,
Speaker 1: that like the physical gags that were in all of
Speaker 1: the Warner Brothers cartoons, deeply influenced I still I still
Speaker 1: definitely watched TV as a kid too. There's nothing I
Speaker 1: don't think there have been any studies saying that CHV absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know, across the board, is bad for kids. It's
Speaker 1: more just make sure parents that there's some free time
Speaker 1: left in there right to to foster that creativity. But
Speaker 1: even when you get out onto say the playground you've left,
Speaker 1: there's no not a TV insight. You're taking your kid
Speaker 1: to the park, You go to the playground. And one
Speaker 1: big difference I think in our generation versus kids today
Speaker 1: is that the playgrounds that we played on when we
Speaker 1: were tykes were far more dangerous, so much rust than
Speaker 1: the one so much rust uh, far more dangerous than
Speaker 1: the ones today. And there's this idea too that that
Speaker 1: kind of preoccupation with a kid's safety also has an
Speaker 1: impact on imaginative play. Right. Hannah Rosen read about this
Speaker 1: back in way back in March of this year for
Speaker 1: the Atlantic, Uh, talking about how you know, parents are
Speaker 1: spending a lot more time statistically speaking with their kids,
Speaker 1: and they did back in the seventies. But the seventies
Speaker 1: is also when you see this rise in lawsuits from
Speaker 1: parents whose kids hurt themselves badly or who even died
Speaker 1: in playground accidents. And there was even a report from
Speaker 1: the government around this time that talked about thousands, tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of kids going to the emergency room every
Speaker 1: year because of playground accidents. And so you have this
Speaker 1: general push by advocates, child safety advocates, which I mean,
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with being an advocate for child safety.
Speaker 1: Let it's a great cause, great cause, good shot guys.
Speaker 1: But there was this huge push for playground playground regulations. Okay,
Speaker 1: that sounds good, right. However, one of those guys who
Speaker 1: was one of the original advocates behind this push for
Speaker 1: you know, like the rubbery floor on the playgrounds, making
Speaker 1: them all plastic and lower and don't get your head
Speaker 1: caught in the bars and stuff, which I just thought
Speaker 1: that was a rite of passage to get your head
Speaker 1: stuck in the bars on the slide. But whatever eventually
Speaker 1: got it out. But so one of the things one
Speaker 1: of these original advocates says, hey, guys, um, we might
Speaker 1: have actually gone too far now by expecting our children
Speaker 1: to be protected from every single risk and assuming that
Speaker 1: our kids are just fragile or dumb. And ironically, the
Speaker 1: number of playground related emergency room visits has actually gone
Speaker 1: up since nineteen eighty, although there are ten fewer fatal
Speaker 1: injuries per year. But one of the reasons too that
Speaker 1: kids might be going to the hospital even more despite
Speaker 1: these safer playgrounds is that they're so soft and safe
Speaker 1: that kids are a little bit more reckless. Right. So, um,
Speaker 1: the place where we go up north and miss again.
Speaker 1: Every summer, our playground that we had up there was awesome.
Speaker 1: It was so awesome. But the slide was like to
Speaker 1: me as a kid, it was like this huge towering
Speaker 1: thing that was all like rusty and metal, and it
Speaker 1: would get so hot in the summer sun and the
Speaker 1: ground was just like maybe a thin layer of woodchips
Speaker 1: like not even it was mostly gravel. So like you
Speaker 1: knew you had to take care of yourself so as
Speaker 1: not to fall and really really hurt yourself. So you
Speaker 1: were more careful when you did fling yourself around on
Speaker 1: that giant metal slide contraption. And so what that early
Speaker 1: childhood education professor Ellen sand Setter was pointing out was
Speaker 1: that we we almost need to encourage kids to participate
Speaker 1: in not reckless play, but but more imaginative playground activities
Speaker 1: that aren't necessarily super super safe because kids have to
Speaker 1: learn how to keep themselves safe or super super supervised.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know. I mean kids are pretty much always
Speaker 1: is being watched right now. It's always expected that an
Speaker 1: adult will be around. And this also reminded me, um, okay,
Speaker 1: so one of the things that Hunter Rosen does in
Speaker 1: this Atlantic piece is travel to Wales where there is
Speaker 1: this free for all. Calling it a playground is a
Speaker 1: misnomer almost. It's a it's a space for children outside
Speaker 1: that essentially looks like a junkyard and kids go there
Speaker 1: no adults in sight, and it's just old mattresses and
Speaker 1: there are hammers, and there's a river. And kids also
Speaker 1: set fires all the time. They've set barrel fires, like
Speaker 1: a little hobo was running around. And that reminded me
Speaker 1: of researching for a stuff I've Never told you video
Speaker 1: not too long ago. About fireplay and children, because in
Speaker 1: the United States, a majority of the times that the
Speaker 1: fire department is called or the houses burned down is
Speaker 1: because kids set a fire, and an evolutionary psychologist says
Speaker 1: that the kids are naturally inclined to fireplay, and then
Speaker 1: more developing nations where they might not have things like
Speaker 1: electricity or central heat. Kids are taught to use fire
Speaker 1: from a very early age, and a child as young
Speaker 1: as five years old can responsibly learn to set a fire.
Speaker 1: But because kids are so you know, we're so fire
Speaker 1: phobic in the US and so scared of kids being
Speaker 1: around fire that our innate fire fascination is just drawn
Speaker 1: out because it's this you know, survival skill that you know,
Speaker 1: humans you would think are evolved to have, and so
Speaker 1: we just keep playing with fire at an older and
Speaker 1: older age, and so you have all of these twelve
Speaker 1: year olds running around burning fires where they shouldn't be right,
Speaker 1: and Rosen also talks about this and maybe sand centered
Speaker 1: as too, about the fact that when you release these
Speaker 1: kids to be kids and to play in these conventional
Speaker 1: play spaces and to explore and to splash through creeks
Speaker 1: and whatnot, their um naughtiness level basically plummets because they're
Speaker 1: able to just release that that kidness they're they're using
Speaker 1: their imaginations, they're funneling all of their energy into something
Speaker 1: mentally productive for them. Whereas if you're keeping them safe,
Speaker 1: if you're keeping them on all of these non stimulating
Speaker 1: plastic playgrounds, they've got to get that like kidness out somehow,
Speaker 1: And a lot of times it turns into bullying, it
Speaker 1: turns into setting fires, it turns into stealing the neighbor
Speaker 1: kids bike, very unproductive things. Yeah, so it's kind of
Speaker 1: funny to see how the more we learn about childhood development,
Speaker 1: the more we are almost clamping down in a negative way.
Speaker 1: So I wonder, though, if we're gonna get to this point.
Speaker 1: I feel like we are getting to a tipping point
Speaker 1: where the helicopter parents are starting to you know, buzz
Speaker 1: away a little bit and p apps. Modern parenthood is
Speaker 1: relaxing its vice gript on it's precious children. Maybe, Like
Speaker 1: I wonder this this whole article from Hannah Rose and
Speaker 1: got me thinking about my own childhood. And and you know,
Speaker 1: she talked to a lot of parents who said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did some crazy stuff in my childhood. I would
Speaker 1: never let my kids do that. I was so stupid.
Speaker 1: I jumped off of things. I went, you know, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. But then I thought of some of the
Speaker 1: things I did, and I guess did my parents just
Speaker 1: assume I was safe just because I was with a friend.
Speaker 1: I was wandering all over creation basically unsupervised with another
Speaker 1: seven year old. You know, I was tramping through neighborhoods
Speaker 1: in weird ways. Oh and this is another thing that
Speaker 1: that that Rosen talks about, as far as letting kids
Speaker 1: find different routes to places. So my my best friend
Speaker 1: and I would walk through my neighborhood, through somebody's backyard,
Speaker 1: through the woods, out into this other neighborhood to get
Speaker 1: to that neighborhood's pool. So we found this like great
Speaker 1: little exploration trail. It involved creeks, it involved turtles, it
Speaker 1: involved birds and other wildlife, and so we got to
Speaker 1: experience all this like feeling of independence when really I'm
Speaker 1: sure I could make that walk in about ten minutes
Speaker 1: as a grown up, but I think it was it
Speaker 1: was so important to let us Ali and me do that.
Speaker 1: But you know, as a grown up, like would I
Speaker 1: let my kids do that? I don't know. And I
Speaker 1: think that's where the divide is. It's like, nostalgically, we
Speaker 1: look back and we're like, oh, that was so great
Speaker 1: that I did that. I was so imaginative and so independent,
Speaker 1: but that was dangerous. I'm not going to let my
Speaker 1: kids do that. Well, Caroline, I now want to read
Speaker 1: a memoir of your childhood adventures, but I also want
Speaker 1: to hear from other listeners too. I mean, what do
Speaker 1: you if you're a parent, how do you let your
Speaker 1: child's imagination roam free? And also what kind of imaginative
Speaker 1: adventures did you go on as well? And I want
Speaker 1: to hear like, are we the only people Kristin and I?
Speaker 1: Are we the only people who remember our childhood imaginations
Speaker 1: and our perception of the world being so vivid, everything
Speaker 1: being so magical, like going into wardrobes and thinking we're
Speaker 1: gonna be trans transferred someone where magical. I wish I
Speaker 1: had gotten through the other side. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 1: Let us know though. Mom Stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com is where you can email us. You can
Speaker 1: also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and message us
Speaker 1: on Facebook. And we've got a couple of messages to
Speaker 1: share with you right now. About our podcast, the body
Speaker 1: Shaming Epidemic, So I've got one here. From Whitney's subject line,
Speaker 1: nearly punched a six year old kid. Well, not really,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to, she writes, I just got done
Speaker 1: listening to your fabulous episode on the body shaming Epidemic
Speaker 1: and just had to relate my story regarding my four
Speaker 1: year old daughter. My husband and I both work, and
Speaker 1: I go to school full time as well, so our
Speaker 1: daughter is in daycare during the week. She has a
Speaker 1: lot of great buddies there, but there is this one
Speaker 1: mean little six year old boy that always gives her grief.
Speaker 1: Who knows he probably has a crush on her, but
Speaker 1: he's still just a little punk in my eyes. One day,
Speaker 1: I picked my daughter up from daycare and she was
Speaker 1: clearly distressed. It took a bit of prodding to discover
Speaker 1: the source of her sadness, but I eventually found out
Speaker 1: that this little boy had been calling her fat all day.
Speaker 1: My daughter has always been a bit bigger and taller
Speaker 1: than the average kid. Can someone say michelin, baby, but
Speaker 1: it's adorable and most importantly healthy. Of course, I explained
Speaker 1: that this was entirely inaccurate, and that she was a gorgeous,
Speaker 1: healthy girl and should not worry about what other people say.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, this is the closest I've ever come
Speaker 1: to punching a little kid right in his face. It
Speaker 1: baffles and saddens me that I should have to explain
Speaker 1: this crazy concept to my four year old. Both me
Speaker 1: and my husband make a point every day to tell
Speaker 1: her how beautiful she is and hopes to build a
Speaker 1: solid foundation for her confidence and self esteem. Hopefully this
Speaker 1: will help her when she encounters the many mean little
Speaker 1: punks throughout her life. So thanks with me. You can't
Speaker 1: let the jerks win. Nope. Um okay. So I have
Speaker 1: a letter here from Heather. She's a new listener. She says,
Speaker 1: this fat shaming makes me think of my husband and
Speaker 1: his seven sisters. He was sometimes described as being husky
Speaker 1: by his mother, while many of the girls were fed
Speaker 1: ice cream shakes to put extra weight on them. There's
Speaker 1: been a lot of body image attention in the family,
Speaker 1: and it's still happening for most of them as adults.
Speaker 1: There's always a comment about the current status and weight
Speaker 1: stats of the siblings among their mom and each other.
Speaker 1: My husband is very weight conscious and has trained himself
Speaker 1: to live on two meals a day to stay slim,
Speaker 1: since the weekend may involve extra meals with our family
Speaker 1: or drinking a few beers. He recently commented about the
Speaker 1: bellies of our boys, ages eight and ten, and I
Speaker 1: didn't really put all this in perspective, but new fat
Speaker 1: shaming would not be the way to go with our kids.
Speaker 1: We're all very active. My husband and I do road
Speaker 1: in trail running races as well as triathlons. The boys
Speaker 1: play soccer in baseball. I am trying to focus on
Speaker 1: health and fitness, balanced diet, and minimal screen time. I'm
Speaker 1: also a pediatrician, so I have to walk a careful
Speaker 1: line at work when discussing weight with kids, I try
Speaker 1: to focus on health and lifestyle with them as well.
Speaker 1: So thank you very much for your letter, Heather, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. We're glad to have you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you want to send us your thoughts on
Speaker 1: imagination or anything else, Mom stuff at how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com is our email address, and to find all
Speaker 1: the links to our social all of our podcast videos,
Speaker 1: and blogs, please head on over to stuff Mom Never
Speaker 1: Told You dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works? Dot com