Hunt, Gather, Parent by Michaeleen Doucleff

My Thoughts

A lot of thought and learning below. To set the right tone, I’ll start by saying that I am a huge fan of this book. This is the book I’m recommending to all parents. I believe that this book can make the whole world a better place just by helping parents figure out how to have fun with their kids and not be all tires and depressed.

Some points below might seem a little unstructured, but I’m just brain vomitting things here. I am such a huge fun of this book that I just want to share all the things it changed in my life.

I like how the author shared her problems with her kid and how her experiences and learning have helped to deal with tough moments. Actual practical stories that are very relatable. Maybe they would be less relatable for other parents and hence less helpful, but I somehow doubt it.

How It Affected Me and My Son

Every morning when Theo wakes up we start with him doing his own breakfast, which usually means:

• moving the chair to the fridge and getting all the butter there is (the more the better), thermos with prepared oatmeal and a bottle of milk
• moving the chair to the counter (he is usually lazy to do it by himself and asks me, i oblige) and start preparing the plate, which means, trying to cut and eat as much butter as possible, while I put the oatmeal in his plate.
• put the plate with oatmeal and butter into microwave and press all the buttons
• once it is hot enough, pour the cold milk and stir. by the time it is time to stir he is usually in his sit and ready to eat, so i do the stirring

this ritual takes time, but it is fun, makes the time go faster and wakes me up. and there is not much that can go wrong:

• milk spilling?… didn’t happen once
• butter overeating. oh well, he is not going to die from that.

after eating for a bit, he goes to play, usually with his cars. he does try to involve me, but I refuse under the pretense of drinking coffee and reading. sometime it works, sometimes it doesn’t. and by “it works” i mean he just plays by himself. it is usually a rare occurence, but after using the tips and tricks from the book it happens more and more (the tip i’m referring to is just ignoring him as i like to put it, though it is descirbed below in a more sophisitcated manner).

This is just one example of how I spend time with him.

There are many others, but the point is that we don’t really do kid activities any more, but try to do all the stuff together. I even let him come to my “home office” while I work, while before I would shut the door. Yes he comes more often and yes he is trying to interrupt or use the computer. But, again, this is slowly improving with consistent approach of saying that you can be nearby and ply by yourself and we can be together in the same room. It definitely feel much nicer, than just locking myself in.

Plus, he helps me by keeping me acountable. Can’t be setting a bad example of just being on social media.

All of this to say it is not easy, but it is incredibly rewarding. Changing the way I coomunicate with my son just changes the whole dynamic. He is no longer a kid, but an adult that just has trouble communicating sometimes and requires a little more attention.

I’ve stopped yelling altogehter. Before I would sometimes raise my voice. Now I just don’t do it. Not because it is bad for your kid or anything like, but becuase this book helped me realize it is just useless. It is not helping you, nor your kid. This has had a profound effec too. He was not a very hysterical to begin with, but these screaming matches have become almost non existent. And when they do appear you know they are about something real.

Book Analysis

Unity Statement

By examining parenting practices in three diverse cultures, Doucleff reveals how Western parenting norms, which emphasize control, isolation, and constant stimulation, often undermine children’s innate drive to cooperate, learn independently, and regulate their emotions, and offers an alternative approach based on togetherness, encouragement, autonomy, and minimal interference that fosters children’s natural development into confident, capable, and well-adjusted individuals.

Problems Author is Trying to Solve

How can parents in Western cultures raise children who are helpful, cooperative, emotionally intelligent, and confident, while minimizing conflict and stress for both the child and the parent?

AI Prompt Ideas

• Age-Appropriate Chore Ideas

Prompt: “My child is […] years old. Suggest a variety of household chores that they can help with safely, considering their age and abilities. Focus on tasks that promote a sense of helpfulness and contribution to the family.”

• Teacheable Storytelling

Prompt: “Generate a story to teach my child about [ Desired Value or Lesson ]. Use [ Characters/Theme based on child’s interests ] for the characters and setting. The story should highlight the importance of [ Desired Value 1 ], [ Desired Value 2 ], and [ Desired Value 3 ].”

Learnings

• The isolated nuclear family is a modern anomaly, not the historical norm. Children evolved to be raised within multi-generational communities with diverse caregivers. This isolation places undue burden and stress on modern parents.
• Much of modern parenting advice stems from 18th-century manuals written for foundling hospitals, not scientific study or traditional wisdom. This advice often prioritizes efficiency and control over child well-being.
• Western parents overuse praise and feel pressured to constantly stimulate their children. This can create anxiety, competition between siblings, and an unhealthy dependence on external validation.

Alternative Approaches from Traditional Cultures

• Maya (Mexico):
  • Acomedido (Helpfulness): Children have an innate desire to help. Maya parents foster this by including children in chores from a young age, patiently teaching them, and acknowledging their contributions.
  • Cooperation: Maya parents prioritize family togetherness over child-centered activities. Children learn by observing and participating in adult tasks, fostering cooperation and a sense of belonging.
  • Intrinsic Motivation: Maya parents minimize praise and punishment, focusing instead on fostering intrinsic motivation by connecting with their children, respecting their autonomy, and allowing them to feel competent.
• Inuit (Arctic):
  • Emotional Intelligence: Inuit parents prioritize calmness and avoid yelling at children. They model emotional regulation and teach children to control their anger through gentle guidance and storytelling.
  • No Arguing: Inuit parents avoid arguing with children, viewing it as unproductive and disrespectful. They use tools like “the look,” consequence puzzles, and questions to encourage children to think and learn.
• Hadzabe (Tanzania):
  • Autonomy: Hadzabe parents grant children significant autonomy, allowing them to explore, play freely, and learn through experience. This fosters confidence, self-reliance, and reduces anxiety.
  • Alloparenting: Hadzabe children benefit from a network of caregivers beyond their parents, including older siblings, other children, and community members. This social support network protects against depression and promotes well-being.

TEAM Parenting

Michaeleen synthesizes these learnings into the TEAM parenting approach:

• Togetherness: Prioritize family togetherness over child-centered activities.
• Encouragement: Encourage and guide children, rather than forcing or controlling them.
• Autonomy: Grant children age-appropriate autonomy to foster confidence and self-reliance.
• Minimal Interference: Intervene only when necessary, allowing children to learn through experience.

Everyday Parenting Tools

Tools for Taming Tantrums

• Energy: In the calmest, lowest-energy state possible, simply stand near the child, silently, and show them that you are close by, supporting them.
• Physicality: Reach out and gently touch the child on the shoulder or offer a hand. Sometimes a soft, calm touch is all a child needs to calm down.
• Awe: Help the child replace their anger with the emotion of awe. Look around and find something beautiful. Tell the child, in the calmest, most gentle voice, “Oh wow, the moon is so beautiful tonight. Do you see it?”
• Outside: If the child still won’t calm down, take them outside for some fresh air. Gently lead them outside or pick them up.

Tools for Changing Behavior and Transmitting Values

• The look: Take whatever you want to say to a misbehaving child and channel it into your facial expression. Open your eyes wide, scrunch up your nose, or shake your head. Then shoot the look over to the child.
• Consequence puzzle: Calmly state the consequences of the child’s actions, then walk away (e.g., “You’re going to fall off and hurt yourself”).
• Question: Instead of issuing a command or instruction, ask the child a question (e.g., “Who’s being mean to Freddie?” when a child hits a sibling, or “Who’s being disrespectful?” when a child ignores a request).
• Responsibility: Give a misbehaving child a task to do (e.g., say to a whining child in the morning: “Come over and help me make your lunch”).
• Action: Instead of asking a child to do a task (e.g., leave the house), just do the task yourself. The kid will follow.

Tools for Sculpting Behavior

Stories

• Tell a story from your childhood: Explain how you and your parents handled a mistake, problem, or misbehavior. Were you punished? How did you react?
• Put on a puppet show: Get a stuffed animal or a pair of socks to act out the consequences of the child’s behavior and how you would like them to behave. Have them play one of the characters in the show.
• Bring the problem into the play zone: Tell the child, “I noticed we’ve been arguing a lot about homework [or whatever problem you have]. Let’s play a game about it. Who do you want to play? Me or you?” Then reenact in a fun way what happens during the argument. Don’t be afraid to exaggerate and act outrageous. The goal is to laugh and release tension built up over the issue.
• Use a monster story: Create a monster that hides out near your house. Tell the child the monster is watching and if the child misbehaves in a particular way, the monster will come and take them away (for only a few days).
• Bring an inanimate object to life: Have a stuffed animal, piece of clothing, or other inanimate object help you coax a child to complete a task. Have the object do the task itself (e.g., brush a stuffed animal’s teeth) or have the object ask the child to do a task (e.g., have a toothbrush ask the child to brush their teeth).

Dramas

• Stage a drama: In a peaceful, calm moment, stage a reenactment of what happened when the child misbehaved. Typically the performance starts with a question, tempting the child to do something she knows she shouldn’t. For example, if the child hits others, the mom may start a drama by asking, “Why don’t you hit me?” Then the child has to think: “What should I do?” If the child takes the bait and hits the mom, the mom doesn’t scold or yell, but she performs a reenactment of what happened, using a slightly playful, fun tone. She acts out the consequences. “Ow! That hurts!” she might exclaim. The mom continues to emphasize the consequences by asking follow-up questions to the child. For example: “Don’t you like me?” or “Are you a baby?” These questions continue to trigger thought. They also link the desired behavior with maturity and the undesirable behavior with infancy.
• Bring the problem to the play zone: Wait for a calm, peaceful moment during the day (not at the time of the problem) and say something like this to the child: “Hey, Rosy, I’ve noticed there’s been a lot of arguing around bedtime. Let’s play a game about that.”
• Put on a puppet show: Take two stuffed animals—or even a pair of socks—and make them into characters who aren’t related to you and your child. This approach will help ensure the child feels relaxed and not like they’re being disciplined or lectured. Then set the scene, act out the problematic activity, and then act out the consequences of that behavior.

Highlights

One big goal of this book is to help you stop this frustrating cycle. By learning the universal parenting approach, you’ll get a view into how children have been raised for tens of thousands of years, how they are hardwired to be raised. You’ll start to understand why misbehavior occurs, and you’ll become empowered to stop it at its root cause. You’ll learn a way to relate to children that has been tested for millennia by moms and dads across six continents—a way that is currently missing from other parenting books.

We’ll visit three cultures—Maya, Hadzabe, and Inuit—which excel in aspects of parenting with which Western culture struggles. Maya moms are masters at raising helpful children. They have developed a sophisticated form of collaboration that teaches siblings not only how to get along, but also how to work together. Hadzabe parents are world experts on raising confident, self-driven kids; the childhood anxiety and depression we see here in the U.S. is unheard of in Hadzabe communities. And Inuit have developed a remarkably effective approach for teaching children emotional intelligence, especially when it comes to anger control and respect for others.

You may not have even realized how many of your parenting struggles were, at their base, about control. But when we remove control from the parenting equation (or at least curtail it), it’s amazing how quickly the struggles and resistance melt away, like watching butter in a hot pan. Hang in there! Try what’s here and you’ll find that the incredibly frustrating moments of parenting—the hurled shoes, the grocery store tantrum, the fight at bedtime—happen a lot less often, and eventually disappear altogether.

SECTION 1 Weird, Wild West

CHAPTER 1 The WEIRDest Parents in the World

Another way to put this idea: If being a member of a culture distorts something as simple as the way we view two black lines on a page, how might our culture be influencing more complex psychological processes? What could it be doing to our parenting philosophy or to the way we view children’s behavior? What if some of the ideas we think of as “universals” when it comes to raising children are actually “optical illusions” created by our culture?

Take, for instance, the nuclear family. In Western culture, there’s a general belief that the ideal family structure consists of one mom, one dad, and their young children, living together under one roof. And to make that structure even more ideal, some might say, the mom stays home and devotes her full attention to childcare. That is most “traditional,” right?I

Not so in the slightest. If you look around the world—and investigate human history—you’ll find that the nuclear family (and a mom whose sole job is parenting) is arguably one of the most nontraditional structures out there. For 99.9 percent of the time humans have been on earth, the nuclear family simply didn’t exist. “It’s a family structure that’s been around for a tiny pinprick in human history,” says historian John Gillis, at Rutgers University, who has been studying the evolution of Western families for more than thirty years. “It isn’t old. It isn’t traditional. It doesn’t have any real roots in the past.”

And it’s definitely not how human children have evolved to be raised. The nuclear family lacks key teachers in a child’s life. For hundreds of thousands of years, parenting was a multigenerational affair. Kids evolved to learn from a bunch of different people of all ages—great-grandparents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, family friends, neighbors, cousins, and all the children that tag along with them.

Over the past thousand years or so, the Western family has slowly shrunk down from a multigenerational smorgasbord to a tiny amuse-bouche, consisting solely of Ma, Pa, two kids, and maybe a dog or a cat. We not only lost Grandma, Grandpa, Auntie Fay, and Uncle Bill in the home, but also nanny Lena, cook Dan, and a whole slew of neighbors and visitors just hanging around the front porch or sleeping on the couch. Once these people disappeared from the home, most of the parenting burden fell on Mom and Dad.

As a result, for the first time in human history, moms and dads are suddenly doing this crazy-hard thing, called parenting, all by themselves (or even solo). “The idea of two people taking care of a child by themselves, it’s just absurd. Totally absurd,” John adds. “Two people are doing all the work of what multiple people are charged to do.”

Note: What if what we consider normal is actually weird and not so good?

This isolation has yet another harmful repercussion: moms and dads have also lost their advisers. And we may have forgotten how important these advisers are.

Note: Thank God for books

In other words, the creation of the nuclear family remodeled how we parent, but also how we learn to parent. Goodbye, Grandma. Goodbye, Aunt Carol. And goodbye parenting knowledge, skills, and extra arms for holding, cooking, and rubbing little backs at bedtime. Hello isolation, exhaustion, and stress.

Take, for instance, the idea that babies need to feed on a particular schedule—every two hours, as my pediatrician told me. That advice dates back at least to 1748, when Dr. William Cadogan penned an essay for the nurses at Coram’s Foundling Hospital in London—a hospital that admitted nearly a hundred babies each day. Clearly, the staff at Coram couldn’t feed (or even hug) so many babies whenever they cried (or “on demand,” as we say). And so the doctor recommended four feedings a day, decreasing to two or three after three months. Initially a war doctor, William had turned to pediatrics after the birth of his daughter in 1746. And he came to the pediatric field with some misogynistic views of parenting: “It is with great Pleasure I see at last the Preservation of Children become the Care of Men of Sense. In my opinion, this Business has been too long fatally left to the management of Women, who cannot be supposed to have a proper Knowledge to fit them for the Task.” (Never mind the fact that women had been fit for the task for millennia in Europe and two hundred thousand years elsewhere.)

Note: Damn. So most modern advice is bullshit 😭? Who to trust?

And sleep training? Guess who proposed that unique technique? Why, a surgeon-turned-sportswriter, of course, who wrote under the pseudonym Stonehenge. If babies “are left to go to sleep in their cots, and allowed to find out that they do not get their way by crying, they at once become reconciled, and after a short time will go to bed even more readily in the cot than on the lap,” Dr. John Henry Walsh wrote in his Manual of Domestic Economy in 1857. Besides doling out advice on infant sleep, John Henry also authored several books about guns, including The Shot-Gun and Sporting Rifle and The Modern Sportsman’s Gun and Rifle. (And he lost a big chunk of his left hand one day when a gun exploded in his grasp.)

CHAPTER 2 Why Do We Parent the Way We Do?

I give Rosy Legos because I think that they’ll help her grow and develop cognitively, and because I want to keep her busy. But no scientific evidence has proven that children need these doodads. In fact, there’s a strong possibility that Rosy would fare better in college, at her future job—heck, even in life, generally—without having a constant stream of new toys cluttering our home.

So why do I feel the need to provide Rosy with ABC train puzzles, fake tea sets, and wooden fruit she can “cut” with a fake wooden knife? Why do these items take up precious space in our cramped San Francisco condo?

The answer has more to do with the Industrial Revolution—and burgeoning consumerism—than it does with cognitive science or child development.

Back in the early 1800s, all kids in the U.S. pretty much played in the same way—no matter if they were rich, poor, or somewhere in between, they didn’t have toys in their homes. Instead, they did what kids have done for two hundred thousand years: they created their own toys with objects they found around the house or outside. “A lack of store-bought toys was no disadvantage,” historian Howard Chudacoff explained in his illuminating book Children at Play: An American History. “Even in wealthy families, informal playthings seemed more important than formal toys,” he wrote. “Connecticut-born Caroline Stickney, daughter of a paper mill owner, cut up discarded bedsheets for doll clothes… [while] countless boys whittled toy boats and weapons from sticks and discarded pieces of wood, and they fashioned kites from paper, cloth, and string that they had collected.”

A few decades later, the Industrial Revolution ushered in countless new ways to produce toys, dolls, puzzles, and books—in bulk. Never before were children’s trinkets cheaper to produce or more appealing to children. Toys were more colorful; dolls were more lifelike; and both were more widely advertised to eager parents who had more disposable income in their pockets. At the same time, psychologists began to think that play was important for children’s development. They advised parents to encourage children to play instead of helping with chores or the family business.

The end result was an explosion of toys in middle-class homes. “Good parents” no longer let children build their own toys from sheets and wood, but diligently showered them with the latest manufactured version of kites, weapons, dolls, and fake food. Toys, once thought to be completely unnecessary, were now deemed essential. And play, once considered the “devil’s workshop,” was now healthy and desirable.

Hmm, she thought, just like me. Where does this knowledge come from, anyway?

So Christina undertook a massive project. She read and reviewed more than 650 parenting books and manuals, dating all the way back to the mid-1700s; around this time, “experts” began writing manuals for “intelligent parents,” and the field of pediatrics began to emerge as a distinct discipline. The resulting book, called Dream Babies, traces the history of parenting advice from John Locke in the 1600s to the rise of Bill and Martha Sears in the 1990s.

The book’s conclusion is a whopper: Much of the parenting advice out there today isn’t based on “scientific or medical studies,” or even on traditional knowledge passed down from grandmas to moms for centuries. Instead, a big chunk of it comes from centuries-old pamphlets—often written by male doctors—intended for foundling hospitals, where nurses cared for dozens, even hundreds, of abandoned babies, all at once. With these pamphlets, doctors were essentially trying to industrialize infant care. But their publications found another hungry audience: exhausted moms and dads. Over time, the size and scope of the doctors’ pamphlets grew. Ultimately, they morphed into the advice books we have today, which are “swollen descendants of terse little booklets written by eighteenth-century doctors for the use of nurses in the foundling hospitals,” Christina wrote. “Techniques of handling children have not made the steady progress toward improvement that some historians of childhood assert,” but instead “they have always been tailored, sometimes attractively, sometimes unpleasantly, to suit the times.”

Remarkably, you see this same pattern repeating again and again in key aspects of Western parenting. A practice comes along at the right time in history; it becomes overhyped by the media, psychologists, pediatricians, public health experts, or all four combined; and then its importance is amplified by a product you must buy or a scary self-help book you must read. The practice infiltrates our homes, schools, churches, and health facilities, and eventually becomes so baked into the fabric of parenting that we hardly even realize it exists.

In the 1960s, parenting experts used guilt, shame, and fear to charge American parents with a new task: stimulate, instruct, and teach children, at every moment. This high-energy, high-talking approach stuck like superglue in American culture. We take the practice for granted. Of course that dad is giving that toddler a full physics lecture at the playground. Of course I started reading to Rosy when she was two months old and continue to now, when she’s three years old. Of course we have 143 children’s books in our house. That’s not just normal. It’s beneficial. It’s optimal.

And when praise greatly outweighs criticism—when parents ignore misdeeds and shortcomings—Miller and Cho worry that parents may be making their own lives harder in the long run. They may be teaching children to be self-centered and to compete with siblings for adult praise and attention. Children may become more vulnerable to depression and anxiety as they grow into adulthood.

Note: You should be promoting behavior with your children that you want them to have when they are older.

Want them to be independent, promote independent play. Want them to do something to please others, praise them more often.

And when you look across cultures—and throughout history—our parenting approach (e.g., oodles of praise, little to no criticism, and constantly soliciting a child’s preference) stands alone. One could argue that we’re the only ones ever to act this way. In many cultures, parents praise very little—or not at all. Yet their children grow up exhibiting all signs of robust mental health, as well as great empathy. Furthermore, in the cultures we’ll visit in this book, the children who receive little praise show more confidence and mental strength than their American counterparts, who are steeped in praise.

Therefore Brian recommends that moms and dads be wary of new ideas that arise from studies, especially when the evidence isn’t very strong and the sample size is small. At the same time, influential figures like pediatricians, public health experts, journalists, and book writers (like yours truly) should also be more cautious about promoting these ideas. People need to understand the uncertainty in any scientific conclusion. Brian added: “With everything in science, humility is good.”

SECTION 2 Maya Method

CHAPTER 4 How to Teach Kids to Do Chores, Voluntarily

Because here’s the thing about learning to do chores, voluntarily: it takes years to learn, Maria tells me. “You have to teach them slowly, little by little, and eventually they will understand.”

Note: When you have a lot of time you can achieve wonders as long as you onow what you are doing, or at least have a sound strategy

Same goes for chores. You can’t simply hang up a chore chart and expect a four-year-old to start washing the dishes on Tuesdays and Thursdays without you asking. As Maria says, you have to teach the child slowly. You have to train them. The child has to understand not just how to do the chores, but also when to do them, and why doing them is important and beneficial to the family—and themselves.

“No matter what I do, Alexa wants to do it, too,” Maria says. “When I’m making tortillas, Alexa starts crying if I don’t let her make tortillas. And afterward, she always wants the broom to sweep up.”

“How do you respond?” I ask.

“I let her make the tortillas, and I give her the broom to sweep up,” Maria says.

“And she actually sweeps and is helpful?”

“It doesn’t matter. She wants to help somehow and so I permit her,” she says, sitting on a hammock with her hands folded in her lap.

“Whenever she wants to help, you let her?” I ask, still not understanding. “Even if she makes a giant mess?”

“Yes. That is the way to teach children.”

Parents see this mess as an investment. If you encourage the incompetent toddler who really wants to do the dishes now, then over time, they’ll turn into the competent nine-year-old who still wants to help—and who can really make a difference.

Psychologists believe that the more a young child practices helping the family, even starting as a toddler, the more likely they will grow up to be a helpful teenager for whom chores are natural. Early involvement in chores sets the child on a trajectory that leads them to helping voluntarily later in life. It transforms their role in both the family and community. They become a responsible, contributing member.

On the flip side, if you constantly discourage a child from helping, they believe they have a different role in the family. Their role is to play or move out of the way. Another way to put it: If you tell a child enough times, “No, you’re not involved in this chore,” eventually the child will believe you and will stop wanting to help. Children will come to learn that helping is not their responsibility.

Note: This just sounds so logical.

Children of all ages (including a few adults I know) are incredibly malleable, and their desire to help is so strong that this pattern can easily shift. The key is for you, the parent, to shift how you think about the child. Encourage a child’s involvement at any age,

What Sheina found was striking: the youngest children, ages three to four, received the most requests, while the older ones, kids in their teens, received the fewest. As the children grew older, they were expected to already know what to do. The small, easy requests, given early on, had taught children what’s expected of them. Parents had successfully transmitted the value of helpfulness. “Children develop cooperative behaviors as they age,” Sheina concludes. “Children are learning how to do tasks that are asked of them, and anticipating that they need to be done.”

Babies (0 to walking)

Think: Watch and include

“As early as the child can sit, sit him next to you while you’re working, and he can see what you’re doing,” a Yucatec Maya mom told Lucia Alcalá and her colleagues.

Young Children (from ages 1 to about 6)

Think: Show, encourage, and request help

“Once the child starts walking, you can begin to ask them to help you.… They can [for example] bring me my shoes from across the room,” a Nahua-heritage mom told Rebeca Mejía-Arauz.

“When I wake up, I always clean and make breakfast—and the children are watching me. If you show them how to do it every day, they will eventually do it themselves,” a Maya mom told me.

At this age, the goal is to fan the flames of a child’s enthusiasm to help, not extinguish them.

in the Maya community in Chiapas, two-year-old Beto wants to help his grandma shell beans, but he’s clumsy about it. The boy grabs a handful of whole beans and throws them in the trash. So his grandma corrects him and shows him the right way. She takes the beans out of the child’s hand, before he can throw them away, and tells him that whole beans aren’t to be thrown away. When Beto ignores her, she repeats the guidance.

If a task is too advanced—or too dangerous—for a child’s skill level, relax. Stay calm. No need to scare them. Tell the child to watch while you do the task. For example, one Maya mom, while frying tortillas, tells her toddler, “Watch so you can learn.” Or find some way that a toddler can participate that’s safe. For example, Rosy holds the plate for me while I take chicken off the grill, or she adds salt and oil to a pot of pasta.

“Depending on the activity, sometimes children observe and other times they help,” Lucia tells me. “Each mom knows whether a child can do a task or not.” (And how do they know that? Guess what the mom has been doing while the child helps. Yup, watching. Watching. Watching. Are you detecting a theme here?)

Young children are great task rabbits. They can go fetch an item from the car, garage, or yard. “Go upstairs to get toilet paper.” “Go to the other room to grab a pillow.” “Go outside to pick some mint.” Even simply walking across the room to get your shoes is a great task for a toddler. Go, go, go. Young kids love to go. Harness that energy while also teaching them to pay attention to the needs of others.

Holding objects while you work is another great job for kids—of all ages. Not only does it encourage them to stick around so they can learn by watching, it also frees up your hands. Here are some examples (notice the pronoun usage; it’s all about doing a task together):

• “Hold the light while we try to fix the stove.” • “Hold the plate while we take the pancakes out of the pan.” • “Hold the door while we take the garbage out.”

Young children are great sous-chefs. They can:

• Stir sauces, cake mixes, and dressings. • Crack eggs. • Marinate meat and fish. • Tear herbs. • Pound paste with a mortar and pestle. • Start cutting or peeling vegetables. (We’ll talk more about knives later. But for now, you may want to start a toddler off with a steak knife or buy a small peeler.)

Carrying can be a family endeavor. If your hands are full, then your children’s hands can be full, too. After the grocery store, pack a small backpack or shoulder bag for children to carry to the car or into the house. Then work together to put the groceries away. With this activity, children will learn to organize the groceries in the kitchen and plan meals together with the family. While traveling, use a small suitcase so children can carry—and pack—their belongings. In our household, everybody carries something when we travel, shop, or go to school.

Young children love being “the mama,” “the dada,” or the “big brother or sister.” Start training them to be kind to siblings by having them grab clean diapers, throw away dirty ones, pick up the baby’s toys, entertain and feed the baby, and even work with you to prepare food and bottles. If the baby is crying, pause to see if the toddler or older child will help before you jump and pick up the baby.

Young children are the consummate cleaners. They can rinse dishes, pour soap into the dishwasher or washing machine, wipe tables, vacuum… you name it, toddlers will clean it. Whatever they lack in thoroughness, they make up for in interest and zest. It might not be super clean afterward, but they will try very hard to make it that way. Don’t interfere with their actions. Give them the tools and let them go wild cleaning.

The task should be real, and it should make a real contribution to the family. The contribution doesn’t have to be a large one, but it shouldn’t be made up. For example, asking a child to “sweep the floor” after you’ve already swept it is not a real task. Nor is asking a child to cut up vegetables, only to throw them out. Maybe you retrim the vegetables a bit or help the child finish sweeping, but you want to be sure that the child’s work contributes to the family.

Another pitfall is to give children “fake” tools, such as fake food, fake cooking equipment, or fake gardening equipment. Kids know the difference. They know they aren’t learning the “real” tasks. And they can’t contribute to a common goal when their part is “fake.”

If a child is not ready for a task, such as cooking on a hot stove or sewing with sharp needles, no need to be alarmed if they want to help. Tell the child to watch you do the task. Or give the child a piece of the real equipment so they can practice on the side. For example, give an eager child extra cloth and thread while sewing, or a pot and spoon to practice stirring. While in the Yucatán, one mom gave Rosy a little ball of masa dough to practice tortilla making on the side (which is different than creating an artificial task for the child).

1. The tasks should be doable (or almost). The key is to give young children tasks that are suitable for their personal skill level. It’s better to err on the side of too easy than too hard. If the job is too hard, the child will become frustrated and quickly lose interest (or they’ll require too much instruction or oversight from you). But even the simplest task (e.g., carrying a loaf of bread out of the grocery store) can be exciting for a young child. For example, if I give Rosy a potato to cut up with a steak knife, she often becomes frustrated and walks away because the potato is too hard to cut with that knife (and if I give her a sharper knife, I’m so anxious about her cutting herself that neither of us can relax). But if I give her a banana to cut, she goes to town and asks for more work.

2. Never force a task. We’ll talk more about this later. For now, just keep in mind that forcing a child to do a task can severely undermine their motivation. We’ll learn many tricks for dealing with a stubborn, unhelpful child later on, but forcing a chore only hinders the teaching of acomedido and builds tension. If a child says no, or ignores you, leave it alone. Try again later. We’re training the child to cooperate, not to obey the parent. Part of working together is accepting a child’s preference when they choose not to help.

Kids: Middle Childhood (from ages 6 to 12)

Think: Encourage, activate, and let them take initiative

“This is when you really teach them what is to be done,” Maria says, referring to her nine-year-old daughter, Gelmy. “You will not give them the work of a mother, but rather something light. The first time they may not pay attention—and also the second and the third time, perhaps—but eventually they will understand.”

Anytime they show initiative, back away and let them go to town. Accepting children’s contributions—without interference—lays the groundwork that will teach them to volunteer help.

1. Continue the focus on working together. Call children over to help with chores alongside you. Instead of “Put away your plate after dinner” or “Fold your laundry,” you’re framing the tasks as a communal activity, such as “Let’s all work together to clean up the kitchen after dinner” or “Let’s all help fold the laundry as a family.”

2. Delegate subtasks. As children grow and become more competent, you can give the child a bigger portion of a task. For example, “Gelmy [age nine] right now is just rinsing the dishes while Angela [age twelve] washes them,” Maria pointed out when I was in her home. “That’s how I teach them—by having them do just part of the task. Eventually, Gelmy will learn the whole task.”

3. Try activation. Instead of explicitly telling the child to do a task, “activate” their help by telling them you’re starting a chore or by giving a hint that a chore is needed. In one of Lucia’s studies, 50 percent of the Nahua-heritage moms said that they’ll sometimes use this approach to prompt a child to help. “For example, a mother reported that she tells her daughter when she is beginning dinner,” the study notes. Then the daughter knows it’s time to start pitching in. “Mom, you want help?” the girl asks. “Yes, get me a tomato, get the things out, the onions or beans,” the mom replies. “She already knows what to get ready for me.”

And it’s true, this process requires quite a bit of patience with the small ones—more patience than I anticipated. When Rosy gets her little hands on the dishes or laundry, the whole process can slow way down. Sometimes she takes a whole minute or two to decide how to arrange a dinner plate in the dishwasher. Or after we fold and put away her clothes, she starts to yank everything out of the drawers and toss the clothes on the floor. “Let’s do it again, Mama!” she shouts. “But—but—but… we just…” I say, grimacing.

A part of me wants to yell at her to leave the room. Another part of me wants to throw my hands up, and let the chaos unfold around me. But neither of those approaches would teach Rosy to be a helpful family member. So I take a deep breath, find more patience, and think back to the Maya grandma in Chiapas teaching the little boy not to throw away whole beans. What would she do now, I ask myself. She would guide Rosy back on track. So I gently take the clothes from Rosy’s hands, put them back in the drawer, and tell her, calmly, “Folded clothes stay in the drawer. We’ll fold them again next week.” Then I leave the room.

Summary for Chapter 4: How to Raise Helpful Kids

Ideas to Remember (kids of all ages)

• Children have an innate desire to help their parents. They’re born that way. It might not seem like it, but they genuinely have a built-in drive to belong to the family, and helping earns their place in the group. • Oftentimes, they don’t know how best to help. So they seem incapable or clumsy. The parents’ job is to train them. • When first starting to help with a task, a child may seem clumsy and perhaps make a mess. But with practice, they will learn quickly while still maintaining their love for helping. • Never discourage a child, at any age, from helping a parent or family member. Shooing a child off can extinguish their motivation to pitch in and work together. If the task is too difficult or hazardous for them, tell them to watch. Or break the task into a doable subtask.

Do It Today

For younger kids (toddlers to about age six or seven):

• Request a child help you and the family throughout the day. Don’t go overboard with requests. One an hour is plenty. Things to ask: • Go fetch something you need; carry a small bag of groceries; stir a pot on the stove; cut a vegetable; hold the door; turn on a hose. • Be sure the requests are for: • Real jobs that make a real contribution to the family, not fake or mock work. • Working together as a team, not for the child doing it alone. • Simple tasks that are easy for the child to understand and complete without your help (e.g., hand a child a book and tell them to put it on the bookshelf instead of asking them to go clean up the living room). You really can’t make the task too easy.

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For older kids (> age seven):

• If a child isn’t accustomed to helping, ease them into it. Try the tips above. And be patient. They might not help right away, but they’ll eventually learn. • If the child is already learning acomedido, increase the complexity of the task as their skill level increases. Let the child’s interest and skills drive your requests. • Instead of telling a child what to do directly, try activating them by indirectly alluding to a task (e.g., you could say, “The dog’s bowl is empty” to remind a child to feed the dog, or “Time to make dinner” to remind a child to come over and start pulling ingredients from the refrigerator).

Tags: summary

“In Maya culture, there’s a belief that everybody has a purpose,” psychologist Barbara Rogoff tells me.

“Even toddlers have a purpose?” I ask.

“Well, yes. Everyone. And part of the goal of social interaction is to help everybody fulfill their purpose.”

CHAPTER 5 How to Raise Flexible, Cooperative Kids

(I also notice that she waits a full five minutes before repeating a request to a child. By comparison, I wait about ten seconds—if that.)

When Suzanne lived here in the early 1980s, she was a new mom herself with a one-year-old boy. Right away, she noticed a striking difference between the Maya parents and her friends with kids back in Chicago. The Maya parents don’t feel the need to constantly entertain or play with their children. They don’t provide an endless stream of videos, toys, and treasure hunts to stimulate their kids and keep them busy. In other words, Maya parents are not on the floor playing princess games or spending weekends at kiddie museums, eating ten-dollar slices of pizza.

Suzanne calls these activities “child-centered.” That is, they’re activities solely for kids that parents would not do if they did not have children. Maya parents don’t feel the need to schedule many, if any, of these activities, Suzanne finds.

Instead, the parents give their children an even richer experience, something that many Western kids do not get much of: real life. Maya parents welcome children into the adult world and give them full access to the adults’ lives, including their work.

Adults go about their daily business—cleaning, cooking, feeding livestock, sewing, building homes, fixing bikes and cars, taking care of siblings—while the children play alongside them and observe the adults’ activities. These real-life events are the “enrichment activities.” They are the children’s entertainment, and their tools for learning and growing, physically and emotionally.

And young children actually love these activities. They crave them. Children don’t see a difference between adult work and play, says psychologist Rebeca Mejía-Arauz. “Parents don’t need to know how to play with kids. If we get kids involved in adult activities, that’s play for kids.” And then they associate chores with a fun, positive activity. They associate it with playing.

Here in the West, we often employ two types of motivation: rewards (e.g., praise, gifts, stickers, allowances) and punishment (e.g., yelling, time-outs, groundings, threats). But in many other cultures, moms and dads tap into another type of motivation: a child’s drive to fit in with their family and to work together as a team. To belong.

2. I totally changed the way I thought about her zest to help. Even if she made a huge mess, broke something, or came over and grabbed a utensil from my hand, I’d remind myself, She is trying to help but doesn’t know how. I need to teach her. And that can take time. I would step back, let her perform the tasks as she wanted to, and try to minimize instructions or comments. And I would encourage any interest in doing chores, even when it seemed like she was only playing or joking around.

• Make Saturday or Sunday your family membership day. On this day, everyone in the family is treated similarly and invited to all the same activities. Replace child-centered activities and child-only entertainment (including child-centered TV, YouTube, and games) with family-centered and adult activities. Focus on immersing the child in the adult world. Do chores around the house, in the yard, or at the office. Go grocery shopping together. Go to a park and have a picnic with family and friends. Go fishing. Go to the beach and read or work while your children play. Have a dinner party and get the children involved in the planning—picking out napkins, the menu, drinks, and all the good stuff. Go to a church activity designed for all ages. Or volunteer where children are welcome, such as a food bank, soup kitchen, community garden, or trail maintenance group. Throughout the day, try thinking to yourself, It’s not my job to entertain the children. It’s their job to be part of the team.

For older children, help them take responsibility for their own child-centered activities. Teach them to plan, organize, and execute their own activities. Let them set up their own playdates and visits with friends. Show them how to sign up for sports, music classes, and other after-school activities. Teach them to bike, walk, or take the bus to the activity. If that’s not possible, help the child set up a car pool with other families. The goal here is to minimize your involvement in child-centered activities and maximize their autonomy.

Personally, I ask myself whether or not I’d attend an activity if Rosy was sick. For example, her preschool class has weekly dinners with the other families. I truly enjoy these nights. The other parents have become friends, as well as a part of our family’s support network. I want to value and strengthen those connections. So even though the dinners are for her school, they count as “family-centered” in my mind and we still go. I also really love playgrounds, if you can believe it. I love watching the birds, reading a book, or writing in a notebook. I love that playgrounds bring together kids of all ages. But I don’t like playing on a playground. That turns the activity from family-centered to child-centered, in my mind. So Rosy and I go to the playground often, but I work while she plays. Period.

• Maximize exposure in the adult world. Take children to places that aren’t typically thought of as “kid-friendly” but can show kids how the adult world works. Take them to the grocery store, the doctor’s office, the dentist’s office, the bank, the post office, the hardware store, the copy store—basically any place you need to go for work and family business.

Don’t expect them to behave perfectly at the beginning. You need to train them, slowly, over time. Start small—say fifteen minutes or so—and build up over time. Or let the child lead you. Observe and see how much time they can handle in an adult place. Rosy is very good at letting me know when she has reached her limits in the adult world. Conversely, sometimes she surprises me with how patient and calm she can be. Just last week, Rosy spent three hours (!) at an eye appointment with very little fussing and chaos.

But when she acts up, I remind her: “This is not a place to play. It is a privilege to be here, and if you aren’t a big enough girl yet, you will have to leave.” When she touches or plays with a piece of equipment, I remind her: “These aren’t toys. This is a big girl’s place where we don’t play.”

• Use toys to teach acomedido. If toys and games are no longer essential in the home (but a privilege for the child to have), then it is no longer a parent’s job to clean them up—at least not by yourself. Now you can set some useful rules about these objects. Show a child how to clean up their toys or work together to do it. And if they don’t participate or fail to pick them up on a regular basis, simply throw the toys away or give them to charity. This idea comes from a Nahua-heritage mom in one of Lucia’s studies. When her son won’t clean up his toys, the mom threatens to “sweep the toys away.” Immediately, the child picks up the toys.

When you invite the child to help, remember the invitation is always to work together. You’re not asking the child to perform the task alone. You can say something like “Let’s all fold this laundry together and we’ll get it finished faster.” Every task becomes an opportunity to work together and reinforce the child’s membership in the family. (Also, remember, the invitation to help is not an order. The child can say no if they want.)

• Start training a coworker. If you really want your child to feel like a full-fledged member of the family, get them involved in your career or job.

Regularly bring them to your office or place of employment (as much as management will allow, but ideally a few hours a week). Let them hang out while you work. They can color, draw, or read. If they show interest in your work, offer up small tasks that are easy and feasible for kids to do. For example, Rosy loves making beautiful thank-you cards to give to people we’ve interviewed. She also staples contracts, scans documents, and puts stamps on letters.

At home on the weekends, if you need to work, invite a child to be near you while you do it. You don’t need to tell them what to do. Simply say something like “Now we’re working and we need to be quiet.” Rosy loves sitting next to me while I write, even though all I do is stare at the screen. She lies next to me and rests. Or she colors and “reads.”

Note: 👀

Be creative. Look for ways to include your kids in your job that our culture doesn’t usually encourage. For example, take your child on a business trip with you, or to a business dinner or party. Ask for your child’s advice or opinion about a business problem or task. Discuss work at dinner or while driving in the car and seek their input. Or simply show them your work—show them your slideshow presentations, your project reviews, your accounting tables. Show them on a map where you work and where your clients or customers work. Show them everything you can. Bring them into your world.

Summary for Chapter 5: How to Raise Cooperative Kids

Ideas to Remember

• Children have a strong natural motivation to work as a team and to cooperate. Think of it as “peer pressure,” but with their family instead of their peers. • Child-centered activities, designed only for kids, erode this team motivation and give a child the impression that they’re exempt from family responsibilities. • On the flip side, when we include children in adult activities, we amplify a child’s motivation to cooperate and do what the family is doing. The child feels like a full-fledged member of the team, with both benefits and responsibilities. • Children will often misbehave when they have to move from the child’s world (including child entertainment) to the adult world. • In the vast majority of cultures around the world, parents do not constantly stimulate and entertain children. This mode of parenting can be exhausting and stressful for both a child and a parent. • Children do not need this entertainment or stimulation. They are fully equipped to self-entertain and occupy themselves. They can do all of that on their own with very little input from a parent or devices in the home.

Do It Today

For all children:

• Minimize child-centered activities. Be sure children have access to your life and work. Be sure they’re around while you do chores or other adult activities. Your activities are more than enough entertainment and stimulation. • Minimize distractions such as screens and toys. The fewer “entertainment” items a child has, the more attractive your world becomes and the more likely they’ll be interested in helping and being with you. • Maximize exposure to the adult world. Go about your business and bring the child with you. Take them on errands, appointments, visits with friends, and even to your workplace, as much as possible. • On the weekends, choose activities that you want to do—activities you would do even if you didn’t have children. Go fishing, hiking, or biking. Work in the garden. Go to the beach or park. Visit friends.

For older kids (> age seven):

• Let an older child plan and organize their own child-centered activities (e.g., sports, music and art classes, other after-school activities, playdates). Encourage them to handle the logistics themselves, such as sign-ups, transportation, et cetera. • Slowly ramp up a child’s responsibilities in the house, including increasing the care of younger siblings and contributions to cooking and cleaning. Think of ways they can help you at work. • If an older child has had little exposure to the adult world, introduce them by degrees. Go about your business and bring the child with you. If the child misbehaves, explain to them how they need to act in the adult world. • If the child is still disruptive, be patient. Don’t give up. Try again later. They’ll learn.

Tags: key-points

CHAPTER 6 Master Motivators: What’s Better Than Praise?

Then Maria’s five-year-old daughter, Alexa, comes over to help, and what I witness is a master class in motivating children. Alexa’s little fingers are clumsy, slow, and just barely getting the job done. But Maria doesn’t stop her. She doesn’t swoop in and grab the child’s hand and show her how to make the tortillas better. Instead, she steps back and lets Alexa make misshapen ones, however Alexa feels is best. She lets her daughter practice. And when the little girl tires of the task, Maria doesn’t force her to stay and finish. Alexa hops up and goes outside, while Maria continues working.

In many ways, intrinsic motivation is magical. It allows people to grow, learn, and work without (much) struggle or resistance. And it likely lasts longer than its counterpart, extrinsic motivation.

External influences, such as rewards and punishments, can actually weaken intrinsic motivation. Sticker charts, promises of ice cream, time-outs, threats of punishment or other consequences often “undermine this type of motivation.”

Western psychology finds that three ingredients are needed to spark intrinsic motivation. The first one, we’ve already talked about: connectedness.

Ingredient 1: Sense of connectedness. Connectedness is the feeling of being related to others, of belonging to a team or family. Studies show that when a child feels connected to a teacher, they’ll want to work hard in that class. The same goes for parents. The more connected a child feels with their family, the more they will want to work with us on family goals and chores. A great way to connect with our kids is to give them their membership card—welcome them into our world and come together as a family to accomplish common goals, like making tortillas for lunch. Working together is more enjoyable and often faster.

Ingredient 2: Sense of autonomy. I’ve mentioned autonomy before, and it’s so important (so very important) that we’ll devote a whole chapter to it later. But in the situation I describe earlier, you can see this ingredient at work in Maria’s interactions with her daughters. By not forcing Alexa or Gelmy to come help make tortillas—and by not forcing them to stay after they’d lost interest—Maria was honoring her children’s autonomy.

Ingredient 3: Sense of competency. In order to stay motivated at a task, a child needs to have a sense that they’re competent enough to do the job. Nobody wants to keep working at something when they feel constantly frustrated or like they aren’t making any progress. On the other hand, an easy task may become too boring to continue. So there’s a sweet spot: the task is challenging enough to keep you interested, but also easy enough that you feel competent doing it. This sweet spot is where intrinsic motivation likely occurs.

The parents don’t say, “Good job,” or other phrases like that. “Sometimes they may use facial expressions to show their approval. And these nonverbal expressions are important. They are clear signs of approval,” says psychologist Rebeca Mejía-Arauz. While Maria and I are talking, I notice her using these signals with me. She lifts her eyebrows to acknowledge that I’m getting the hang of what she’s telling me. Or she nods her head and says, “Hmm.”

Praise has another pitfall—a big one. It can cause strife among siblings, because praise breeds competition. Psychologists have found that when young children grow up hearing frequent praise, they learn, from an early age, to compete with siblings for approval and attention from their parents. The lack of praise may be one reason Maya siblings work well together (and fight less than American siblings). They don’t need to compete with one another for verbal kudos.

Instead of praising children, Maya parents acknowledge or accept the child’s idea or contribution to an activity—no matter how inconsequential, ridiculous, or misshapen that contribution (or tortilla) might be.

Maya parents let the child make a meaningful contribution to the daily tasks, and they don’t tend to fuss with that contribution in order to meet the expectations you would have as an adult. Parents value a child’s version of sweeping, the child’s misshapen tortilla, or the ideas a child brings forward. They value a child’s vision. And they respect that vision.

Acknowledgment from parents fuels the child’s interest in a task, says psychologist Lucia Alcalá. “I think that it gives the child motivation to help more. A child sees that their contribution matters and they’re helping the family. That’s more powerful than any praise.”

Maya and other indigenous parents tend not to resist like this—they don’t get in a child’s way while the child is helping. “The moms don’t stop the child from doing something, even if it’s wrong,” Rebeca says, referring to the Nahua-heritage moms. Instead—and this is key!—the parent pays attention to what the child is doing, and then builds off the child’s idea. As a result, the parent sets up a beautiful cycle of collaboration, wherein the child or parent contributes an idea and the other takes the idea and expands it. Lucia calls this “fluid collaboration.” It’s when two people are working seamlessly together, like a single organism with four arms. In those moments, there’s minimal talking, minimal resistance, and minimal conflict.

As a parent, there are many ways to acknowledge a child’s ideas without actually doing what they ask. Sometimes a simple comment like “That’s a good idea” is all a child needs to feel included and motivated to stay involved, even if you don’t use their idea at all. A Maya parent could say, “uts xan,” which literally translates to “also good.” An adult would interpret this statement to mean, “I don’t agree.” But to a child, it seems like acceptance.

Nahua-heritage parents sometimes acknowledge children’s work with small, casual gifts (otherwise they don’t generally give rewards for specific tasks, Lucia and her colleagues find). But the gifts aren’t tied to a particular task, such as “If you help me do the dishes, I’ll buy you ice cream.” Instead, the parent rewards the child for their general helpfulness, “as being a contributing member of the family,” as Lucia and her colleagues write. And these treats are typically small, such as “cooking a special meal or buying the child something necessary like underpants.”

Recognizing a child’s overall helpfulness provides more information to a child than praising a specific task. Instead of focusing on a one-off accomplishment, you’re helping the child to learn an overarching value.

• Point out helpfulness (and unhelpfulness). Instead of praising children for helping with a request, switch to acknowledging overall helpfulness. Don’t overdo it or do it too frequently. A simple statement like “That’s helpful” is all you need when a child shows acomedido or voluntarily helps. You might even wait until the end of the week to acknowledge the child’s overall effort. Focus on the learning aspect or the contribution to the family: “You are really starting to learn to be helpful,” or “You are starting to be a big girl and contribute to the family’s work.”

• You can also acknowledge when someone else fails to show acomedido. This will help the child learn what not to do. And focus on why that behavior isn’t valued. Again, use simple statements so it’s clear. For example, one afternoon, a friend of Rosy’s didn’t help us pick up toys in our living room. So I said, “That wasn’t very acomedido. If she had helped us, we could have all finished faster.”

• Stop punishments and rewards for specific chores. These tools simply don’t work when it comes to teaching children to do chores (or really, anything) voluntarily. In many cases, they actively undermine children’s own drive to help.

• Explain the value the task holds for the entire family. Try explaining to the child why helping out is so important—or essential—in the home. One Nahua-heritage mom told Lucia that she never punishes her daughter: “But I do get upset and admonish her.” When her daughter doesn’t clean up her toys, she tells the girl, “You need to try harder.” The mother explained to Lucia, “I tell her that so she sees that we’re also trying hard with the little that we can give her, so she should try hard, too.”

This approach works well with Rosy, especially when she can see I’m tired and overworked. I tell her, “Rosy, your father and I are working hard to make this house nice for everyone. We are trying our best. As a family member, you need to work hard and try your best.”

• Connect the helpfulness to maturity. If a child takes initiative and does a chore voluntarily, acknowledge their growth and progress by saying something like “Oh, you’re starting to learn how to contribute,” or “You cleaned up your toys because you’re a big girl.”

I also tell Rosy when she acts like a baby. For example, if she doesn’t clean up her toys or help with the dishes, I say, “Oh, you didn’t do it because you’re a baby?” And that comment often leads to a whole discussion about what big girls do versus what babies can do. For example, “Do babies get to ride a bike?” “Do babies get to eat ice cream?” Eventually, Rosy wants to be a big girl and goes and cleans up.

Let the child have fun with the chore. I’m not a big fan of making chores “fun” or turning them into a game. I cannot sustain that energy for very long, and I don’t enjoy acting like a three-year-old. But if Rosy comes up with her own way to make the chore more playful, I don’t stop her. Instead, I pay attention to her idea or contribution and try to build upon it. For example, one afternoon while hanging the clothes on the line to dry, she starts throwing the clothes all over the porch. So I decide to incorporate her “play” into the chore. I tell her, “Stand by the clothesline and I will throw you the clothes to hang up.” She loves it! She wants to keep throwing the clothes back and forth. Eventually, we get the job done. It takes a little longer, but her motivation for doing laundry skyrocketed. Now she runs over when I call (sometimes), and we have incorporated the “throwing” idea into several other chores, such as cleaning up Legos and putting away books. I tell her, “Rosy, stand over by the bookshelf and I’ll throw you the books.” That totally gets her helping!

• Threaten natural consequences. If you need to use a threat, try to make the punishment as close to a natural consequence as possible. For example, sometimes I tell Rosy, “If we don’t clean up the kitchen, ants will come and take over the counters. Do you want ants in our food?” Or I say, “If we don’t wash your lunch box, you will have to eat from a dirty, stinky box tomorrow. Do you want that?”

• Point out when you help them. With Rosy, I find that pointing out reciprocal responsibility works well to boost her motivation. For example, one night she doesn’t help with the dishes. When I ask her to come help, she says, “I’m tired,” and runs away. Ten minutes later, she comes back and asks me to help her find her lovie. Then I say something like “Wait, did you help me with the dishes just a few minutes ago?”

• Learn to value a child’s contribution. When a child comes over to help with a task, listen to their idea. Acknowledge it in some way, either by trying it, incorporating it into your activity, nodding your head, or saying, “We can.” If the child takes action, don’t stop them. Instead, pay attention and see how they’re trying to contribute. Then think of a way to build off that contribution or a way to improve their work slightly.

Whatever you do, suppress the urge to resist. Refrain from interfering with the child or changing their course. If you step back and let a child “take over” a task, the child will be way more motivated to help out again in the future than if you reject, minimize, or ignore their ideas and contributions.

• Measure how much you praise your children (and how much you resist them). Your smartphone is a great device for analyzing your parenting habits—and gaining a fresh perspective. One evening, put your phone on the kitchen counter or dining room table and set it to record in the background for thirty to sixty minutes while you interact with your children. Then, later that evening, listen carefully to the recording. How many times do you praise the child for an inconsequential task or something they should just be doing without the need for praise? How many times do you resist their ideas? Or just ignore them when they’re trying to contribute? How many times do you interfere with their actions and try to change their course?

I accidentally ran this experiment one night when I left my radio mic running on the kitchen counter for two hours while Rosy and I made dinner. Listening to the tape afterward was really difficult. It actually made me cry. As I played back our conversation, I realized that not only was I resisting Rosy’s ideas and contributions, but I wasn’t listening to her words at all. Many times she was trying to tell me X, while I was so certain Y was correct that I could not hear her. I really thought that I knew the answer and didn’t need to listen to her. She kept trying so hard to get her ideas across that she would start crying. And the pleading and pain in her voice was so sad that it broke my heart. I realized I needed to stop talking so much (including praising her) and make a real effort to pay attention to her words and actions. (Psychological anthropologist Suzanne Gaskins had given me similar advice a few months earlier. “American parents need to stop talking so much and listen more to their children,” she said.)

• Have praise-free days. Once you realize how much you praise your child, try pruning it back. Start small: Set a timer for fifteen minutes and try not to verbally praise the child until the timer goes off. Work your way up to two hours, and eventually, entire days. Assess how you feel after these praise-free moments. Is parenting less stressful, less tiring? How does your child act? Do they seek your attention less? Are they less demanding? Is your time together a little bit more relaxing? Does your child fight less with their siblings?

We now have the three ingredients, or steps, needed to support children’s helpfulness. As we’ll see in the next two sections, parents can use these three steps to transmit any value they want to a child. Across the globe, cultures use this “formula” to transmit all kinds of values, such as generosity, respect, and patience.

The steps are: Practice, Model, Acknowledge

1. Practice. Give kids oodles of practice helping out around the house and working together, especially the young ones. Assign tasks, invite them over to watch, and encourage their desire to participate.

2. Model. Give children their membership cards. Immerse them in your day-to-day life so they can gradually learn chores by watching and can feel like full-fledged members of the family.

3. Acknowledge. When a child tries to help, accept their contributions and value their ideas. Respect their vision. Tell the child when they are learning the value. Point out the presence of the value (or its absence) in others’ actions. Connect their learning to “growing up” or maturing.

Summary for Chapter 6: How to Motivate Children

Ideas to Remember

• To motivate a child without bribes or threats, the child needs to feel: • Connected to you or another person close to the child. • Like they are making the choice to do the task and no one is forcing them. • Like they are competent and that their contribution will be valued. • Praise can undermine motivation and generate competition (and strife) between siblings. • Parents can learn quite a lot from a child. Knowledge can flow in both directions. Don’t assume your approach or vision is the best. When you pay attention to a child’s vision or ideas, you’ll likely find the child often has valuable and useful information. • Accepting a child’s knowledge, idea, or contribution is a potent way to motivate the child.

Do It Today

For children of all ages:

• Resist the urge to correct a child, especially when they’re pitching in or helping the family. Step back and let a child perform a task without interfering, even if the child isn’t executing the task as you wish or taking the optimal approach. • If a child is resisting a request (e.g., to help with the dishes), you’re likely forcing the issue too hard. The child knows what you want. Stop asking. Wait and let the child take the lead. • Pay close attention to how a child is trying to contribute and then build off their ideas instead of resisting them. • Help a child learn a task by letting them practice that task instead of lecturing or explaining the task to them. Offer simple course corrections, sparingly, while the child takes action. • Accept a child’s contribution to an activity even if it isn’t what you expect or want. • Use praise very sparingly. When you do praise, attach it to learning an overall value (e.g., “You are starting to learn to be helpful”) or to maturity (e.g., “You are really becoming a big girl”).

Tags: key-points

SECTION 3 Inuit Emotional Intelligence

CHAPTER 7 Never in Anger

“Indeed, the maintenance of equanimity under trying circumstances is the essential sign of maturity, of adulthood,” Jean would write in Never in Anger, her book about her time with Allaq and Inuttiaq’s family.

“Your daughter must be sick of you. That is why she is misbehaving,” Sally tells me as we’re having a cup of tea at her mother’s kitchen table. “Rosy needs to be around other kids. You need a break.”

Parenting books often mention a concept from psychology and neuroscience called executive function. Basically, it’s a suite of mental processes that help you act thoughtfully, instead of impulsively. It’s the voice in your head that makes you pause before you react, asking, What repercussions will follow my action? Is there a better approach? Executive function helps you to control your emotions and behavior, or to change direction when needed. Studies suggest that better executive function as a child predicts a number of better outcomes later in life—better performance in school, better mental health, better relationships, higher chances of finding and keeping a job, et cetera.

CHAPTER 8 How to Teach Children to Control Their Anger

Across the board, all the moms and dads mention one golden rule of Inuit parenting: “Never yell at a child,” says seventy-four-year-old Sidonie Nirlungayuk, who was born in a sod house not far from Kugaaruk. “Our parents never yelled at us, never, ever.”

Really? Everything was in a calm voice? Even if a child slaps you across the face? Slams the front door and locks you out of the house? Or insists on intentionally “pushing your buttons”?

“Yes,” says Lisa Ipeelie with a giggle that seems to emphasize how silly she finds my question. “When children are little, it doesn’t help to raise your voice, or get angry at them. It will just make your own heart rate go up.”

“Getting angry at a child has no purpose,” says eighty-three-year-old Martha Tikivik. Born in an igloo on Baffin Island, she has raised six children. “Getting angry isn’t going to solve your problem. It only stops communication between the child and the mom.”

“When we yell at children, we are training them not to listen,” she tells me. “A lot of times, parents will say, ‘But he won’t listen until I raise my voice,’ and I say, ‘Okay. Raise your voice to get him to listen and then you’ll always have to raise your voice.’ ”

Think back to the formula—to train a child to behave in a certain way, we need two main ingredients, and a dash of a third: practice, modeling, and, if necessary, acknowledging. When we yell and get angry at children, we model being angry. Since children often yell back at us, we give them oodles of practice at yelling and getting angry at us. And then if we yell back, again, after they yell at us, we acknowledge and accept their anger.

By contrast, parents who control their own anger—both around and toward their children—help their kids learn to do the same. “Kids learn emotional regulation from us,” Laura says. Every time you stop yourself from acting in anger, your child sees a calm way to deal with frustrations. They learn to stay composed when anger arises. So to help a child learn emotional regulation, the number one thing parents can do is learn to regulate their own emotions.

CHAPTER 9 How to Stop Being Angry at Your Child

From what I can tell, it’s a two-step process:

1. Stop talking. Just stay quiet. Don’t say anything.

2. Learn to have less—or even no anger toward children. (Note: I’m not talking about controlling your anger when it arises, but rather generating less anger in the first place.)

So following Sally and Maria’s lead, I’ve flipped my strategy. Now when I feel anger toward Rosy, I simply close my mouth. I press my two lips together and hold. I think, Hold still like a rock, Michaeleen. Be a rock. Be a rock. And then I just watch Rosy for a beat. So I can assess the situation.

• Walk away. For a few minutes, even a few seconds, I just walk away. You can leave the room. Get out of the car. Walk down the sidewalk. Walk across the park. Or simply turn your back on the child. Maria told me this strategy, straight up, on the first day we met, while chatting at her kitchen table. “When I feel anger coming, I leave the children or grandchildren alone,” she said. “I just leave them alone.”I

Truth is, before staying with Sally and Maria, I genuinely believed that in order for Rosy to learn—to learn respect and gratitude—I had to be firm and strong. And I had to reprimand and scold. My parents had raised me this way, and I thought that’s what all good parents do. I didn’t think that a tender, gentle approach could really work. But Maria and Sally convinced me it not only works, it is actually more effective, especially with a child like Rosy.

And so with a hefty dose of skepticism, I try to do the impossible: stop feeling so angry at my daughter.

How do you do that? After talking to moms, dads, grandmas, and grandpas, I start to see the key: these parents take a different view of young children’s actions than we do in Western culture. Inuit parents interpret children’s motivations differently. For example, in Western culture, we tend to think children are “pushing buttons” or “testing boundaries,” or even being manipulative. When Rosy was just a baby, my older sister said to me on the phone, “It’s amazing how young kids learn to manipulate us so early. You’ll see.”

But what if this idea is completely wrong? Do we really know if toddlers and young children “manipulate” us the way that adults manipulate? That children push our buttons the way that adults push buttons? There’s no scientific evidence that suggests either of these statements is true. There are no brain scans in which the “manipulating” circuitry lights up when toddlers misbehave. There are no psychological studies in which two-year-olds “come clean” and admit, yes, all they want to do is enrage Mom and Dad.

So, what if we throw out the window the Western way of thinking and come up with better narratives for understanding the ways of young children? Instead of characterizing young children as manipulative button-pushers trying to make us angry, what if we think of them as illogical, newbie citizens trying to figure out the proper behavior? What if we assume their motivations are kind and good, and it’s just that their execution needs some improvement?

• Expect children to misbehave. Expect them to be rude, violent, and bossy. Expect them to make a mess, do tasks improperly, and sometimes be an overall pain in the butt. Don’t take it personally (or think you’re a bad parent). It’s just how children are made. And it’s your job, as the parent, to teach them how to behave acceptably and control their emotions.

If the child can’t meet expectations in the moment, try to change the environment, not the kid.

Dolorosa looks at me with a slight expression of pity and says simply, “If a little child doesn’t listen, it’s because she is too young to understand. She is not ready for the lesson.”

It’s an insight I’ll never forget. Dolorosa goes on to explain how Inuit parents view young kids’ misbehavior. “Little children don’t have understanding yet,” she says. “They don’t understand what’s right and wrong, what respect is, how to listen. Parents must teach them.”

• Stop arguing with small children. Sidonie Nirlungayuk, age seventy-four, puts it quite eloquently: “Even when a child mistreats you, you don’t fight back with a young child,” she says. “Just leave the point alone. Whatever is wrong… eventually the behavior will get better.”

Inuit see arguing with children as silly and a waste of time, Elizabeth tells me, because children are pretty much illogical beings. When an adult argues with a child, the adult stoops to the child’s level.

During my three visits to the Arctic, I never once witness a parent argue with a child. I never see a power struggle. I never hear nagging or negotiating. Never. The same is true in the Yucatán and Tanzania. Parents simply don’t argue with children. Instead, they make a request and wait, silently, for the child to comply. And if the child refuses, the parents may make a comment, walk away, or turn their attention elsewhere.II

And you can, too. Next time you find yourself nagging, negotiating, or getting into a back-and-forth with your child, just stop. Close your mouth. Close your eyes if you need to. Wait for a beat. Touch the child’s shoulders lightly and walk away. Or employ one of the tools discussed in the next chapter. But do not argue. Ever. It will never end well.III

TEAM 2 Encourage, Never Force

Forcing children causes three problems: First, it undermines their intrinsic motivation—that is, it erodes a children’s natural drive to voluntarily do a task (see chapter 6). Second, it can damage your relationship with your child. When you force a child to do something, you run the risk of starting fights and creating anger on both sides. You can build walls. Third, you remove the opportunity for the child to learn and make decisions on their own.

Just note: encouragement and training sometimes take time. These aren’t quick fixes, but they are steps toward deep changes that will persist as the child grows. Along the way, you’ll give your child a gift that helps them throughout their lifetime—strong executive function.

The next time a child does something that totally enrages you or even simply triggers a rising sense of irritation in your body, do the following:

1. Close your mouth. Just say nothing. If you need to, close your eyes.

2. Walk away for a few seconds or a few minutes until the anger passes.

3. Think about the misbehavior from a different perspective or put it in a different context. Think: “She is not pushing my buttons. She is not manipulating me. She is an illogical, irrational being. And she doesn’t yet know the proper way to behave. It’s my job to teach her rationality and logic.” (If those thoughts don’t resonate, you can also try a different track and think about the child’s strong drive to help. Think to yourself: “She wants to help. She wants to contribute and work together. But she doesn’t know how. I have to show her the best way.”)

4. Then with the calmest voice you can muster, simply say to the child the mistake she is making or the consequences of her actions. For example, if she hits the dog, try: “Ouch, that hurts the dog.” Or if she hits you, try: “Ouch, that hurts me. Ouch. You don’t want to hurt me.”

5. Then leave it all alone. Just let it go. Let the misbehavior pass.

6. And if needed, use one of the parenting tools described in the next chapter to encourage the proper behavior.

Summary for Chapters 8 and 9: How to Teach a Child to Control Their Anger

Ideas to Remember

Anger

• Anger toward a child is unproductive. It generates conflict, builds tension, and stops communication. • When a parent frequently yells and screams at a child, the child will eventually stop listening to the parent. • Parents and children can easily fall into a cycle of anger, in which the parent’s anger generates anger in the child, which in turn triggers more anger in the parent. • You can stop this cycle by responding to the child with kindness and calmness.

Anger control

• We often overestimate children’s emotional intelligence. • Anger control is a skill children learn over time with practice and modeling. • To help a child learn anger control, the best thing you can do is control your own anger in front of the child. • Every time we yell at a child, we teach them to yell and act in anger when they’re upset or have a problem. The child practices being angry and yelling. • Every time we respond to an upset child with calmness and quiet, we give the child the opportunity to find that response in themselves. We give the child an opportunity to practice settling themselves down. • Over time, this practice teaches the child to regulate their emotions and respond to problems in a calm, productive way.

Tips and Tools

• When you feel anger toward a child, stay quiet and wait for the anger to pass. If you speak, a child will feel your anger. So, best to stay silent. • If you can’t control your anger, walk away or distance yourself from the child. Return when you are calm. • Teach yourself to have less (or even no) anger toward children. • Change how you view children’s behavior. Expect young children to misbehave and cause problems. They aren’t pushing your buttons or trying to manipulate you. They’re simply irrational beings who haven’t learned proper behavior yet. You have to teach them. (Their misbehavior doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent.) • Never argue (or even negotiate) with a child. Arguing gives the child practice at arguing while you model the behavior yourself. If you start arguing with a child, stop talking and walk away. • Stop forcing children to do things. Forcing causes conflict, erodes communication, and builds anger (on both sides). Use the tools in the next chapter to encourage proper behavior instead of forcing it.

Tags: key-points

CHAPTER 10 Introduction to Parenting Tools

I: Tools for Tantrums

Tool #1: Parent with calmness

“I tell the new generation, ‘Don’t let the kids cry too much. Try to calm the kids down,’ ” Maria Kukkuvak tells me, sitting at her kitchen table. “Parents and grandparents need to calm kids down.”

And the best way to do that—whether the issue is crying, screaming, or an endless stream of demands—is for the adult to interact with the child from a place of the utmost calm. Seriously, we are talking about a degree of calmness that we rarely see in Western culture. Think lying-facedown-on-a-massage-table calmness. Or the way you feel after taking a long, hot bath. Think Mister Rogers, stoned.

So if you want your child to have high energy, then have high energy yourself. Ask the child a string of questions. Give her instructions. Issue many requests. Talk to her rapidly, emphatically, and with urgency. Raise your voice. Repeat your request. Be intense.

But if you want your child to be calm, be calm yourself. Be quiet. Be still. Be tender. Over time, the child will come to see you as a safe haven in their emotional storms.

There’s no question about it: parenting with calmness works. And here’s the amazing part: the sheer act of the parent being calm has a massive influence on an upset child, not just in the moment, but over the long run. Over time, the child learns to calm herself down without the parent’s aid, Tina says.

As Tina puts it: “We need to model calmness. We have to be regulating our own internal states first before we expect our children to learn to regulate theirs.”

Tool #2: Parent with Touch or Toss (Physicality)

In this way, physicality is a bit like a Swiss Army pocketknife. It offers several tools in one. You can gently touch a child’s arm or rub her back to curtail a rising tantrum, or you can pick her up and bounce her on your knee when you see an outburst gathering. Physicality can also land somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum.You can give a child a bunch of Inuit kisses or kuniks (e.g., sniffs with your nose) on the cheek, a little tickle under the arm, or a raspberry on the belly. Either way, the physicality tool is a way of showing a child that they’re safe and loved, and that there’s a calmer—and stronger—person taking care of them.

And for kids of all ages, physicality is more effective than lecturing, scolding, or long explanations. When children feel upset, they don’t have access to the “left” or logical side of the brain, says child psychotherapist Tina Payne Bryson. During emotional outbursts, the “right side” of a child’s brain calls the shots—and the right side is all about nonverbal communication, Tina and her colleague Dr. Dan Siegel write in *The Whole-*Brain Child. “Our right brain cares about the big picture—the meaning and feel of an experience—and specializes in images, emotions, and personal memories.” And so, when you calmly hug a screaming two-year-old or softly touch the shoulder of a crying eight-year-old, you speak directly to the most accessible part of their brain, and in doing so, you communicate more effectively with the child.

In many ways, kids are hardwired to learn emotional regulation through physicality—not through verbal instruction. “In our society, we’re trained to work things out using our words and our logic. But when your four-year-old is absolutely furious because he can’t walk on the ceiling like Spider-Man (as Tina’s son once was), that’s probably not the best time to give him an introductory lesson in the laws of physics,” the pair write.

Tool #3: Parent with Awe

“The next time you are outside walking, take a moment and find a crack in the sidewalk where there is a weed poking out and attempt to create the feeling of awe—awe at the power of nature,” she explained. “Practice that feeling over and over again. Practice feeling awe at the sight of a butterfly. Or the sight of a particular lovely flower. Or at the clouds in the sky.”

Under the purple sunset, Elizabeth does exactly this with Rosy. And I see Sally’s mom, Maria, do it with her great-grandson Caleb many times. During our stay with them, every time the little boy cries or whines, Maria takes him over to a window to show him the beautiful bay. In doing so, she reminds the child of something wonderful in his life, something to feel grateful for, something bigger than himself. And this redirection soothes him every time.

“It may sound hokey in the abstract, but I guarantee that if you practice awe, that practice is essentially helping to rewire the brain. So that you can make that emotion [awe or gratitude] much more easily in the future,” Lisa said.

This practice is especially important for children because their brains are malleable. “Children’s brains are waiting for wiring instructions from the world,” she says.

Thus the awe tool not only helps to stop tantrums in the moment, but it also helps reduce them in the future.

Tool #4: Take the Child Outside

The tool is as straightforward as it sounds: When a child is having a tantrum, you calmly pick them up and put them outside. You can just set them down, walk back in the house, and watch them from a window, as a Maya parent might do. You can put the child in a baby carrier, like Dolorosa suggested, and walk around a bit. Or if you live in a city without much outdoor space, as we do, you can just hold the little one in your arms on your tiny porch and be silent. If you have to say something, try something like “You’re safe. I love you.” When the child starts to settle, you can say something like “We can go back inside when you calm down a bit.”

As children get older, you can’t pick them up and take them outside as easily. In my experience, Rosy no longer wants me to pick her up when she gets upset. So instead, I gently take her hand and lead her outside. If I say anything at all, I tell her something like “Let’s get some fresh air. You’ll feel better in a few minutes.” But in general, you don’t need any words. Your calm, gentle action is enough.

Tool #5: Ignore It

In many cultures around the world, parents ignore tantrums. Anthropological studies overflow with examples of a small child who lashes out at a parent, and the adults in the room respond by simply pretending that the child isn’t there.

But many Inuit parents take a more nuanced approach. They sometimes wait a bit before reacting to a tantrum, to see if the emotion passes. In general, however, parents don’t let toddlers and very young children cry for very long. An adult or sibling will comfort them with one tool or another. For older children, it’s a different issue. Once the parent believes a child is capable of calming themselves down, parents can—and do—ignore their emotional outbursts.

As Inuit moms keep telling me through their words and actions: Go easy on the little ones when they lose control of their emotions. Throw out your own anger and frustration (think of that spa room) and replace it with empathy and love. Remind yourself that children don’t have the emotional skills that we adults do. We need to show them how calmness works, over and over again, before we can expect them to master the concept.

II: Tools for Everyday Misbehavior

A big goal of Inuit education is to trigger thought. “Children need to think about what they’re doing. They always need to think,” says seventy-one-year-old Theresa Sikkuark. Indeed, the word for “education” in one dialect of Inuktitut is isummaksaiyug, “which means roughly, to seek thought, to seek mind… and other cognitive kinds of things,” anthropologist Jean Briggs has noted. “This exercising of the thought processes goes on all during a child’s life.”

As we examine the next set of tools, we’ll start to understand the importance—and power—of triggering thought. With these tools, you are not telling children what to do, but instead giving them the clues they need to figure out the proper behavior on their own. In other words, you use these tools for encouraging and guiding, versus demanding and forcing.

You can apply these tools for everyday, run-of-the-mill misbehaving from kids of all ages, from toddlers to teenagers. (I have also seen many of the tools work wonders on adults.) Maybe the kid won’t leave the playground or help clean up a messy living room. Maybe they won’t go do their homework or stop hitting their little sister. Or maybe, just maybe, they just won’t go to bed! In all these cases, the child refuses to behave, but—unlike during a tantrum—they still have control of their emotions (or at least partially). Their rational, logical self is awake and open to input.

These tools accomplish a few key goals:

1. They work in real time. They change behavior right away, so they can help keep kids safe.
2. They build toward long-term goals, such as helping children learn key values (e.g., respect, gratitude, and helpfulness).
3. They teach children to think.
4. They sidestep power struggles, arguing, and back-and-forth negotiations. They avoid the anger cycle.

Everyday Tool #1: Learn the Look

Did you know that children can read their parents’ faces really well? I mean, really, really well. Even teeny-weeny babies and toddlers can do it. So most of the time, parents don’t have to say a single word to change a kid’s behavior. We simply have to give them “a look.”

Take everything you want to say, every bit of emotion you feel toward the child, and channel it through your eyes, your nose, your furrowed brow—or just any part of your face.

Across the world, parents use all types of facial expressions to direct children’s behavior. One well-executed look can be magical. You can get a child to walk away from a rack of candy bars in the grocery store. You can get a child to stop hitting his brother or encourage him to share his granola bar with a friend on the playground.

“The look” has many advantages over words. It works at a distance—across the playground, the living room, or the dinner table. And since it’s silent, children have a very hard time “arguing” with “the look.” Kids can’t negotiate with a nose or a pair of eyes like they can a verbal command.

In my experience, “the look” proves more effective than telling a child “No” or even “Don’t do that.” The look says everything you need to say in a quick, calm glance. It shows who is cool and in charge.

Everyday Tool #2: Parent with Consequence Puzzles

“Tell them the consequences of their behavior. Tell them the truth,” says Theresa Sikkuark.

Note: This prompts children to think which is always the goal

After that incident at the playground, I start to see this form of guidance and discipline everywhere in Kugaaruk, not just with Rosy, but with kids of all ages. A seven-year-old girl climbs on top of a shed, about fifteen feet off the ground, and an older girl says matter-of-factly, “You’re going to fall, Donna, and hurt yourself.” Donna pauses on the roof, waits a bit, and then gets down. At Maria’s house, six-year-old Samantha climbs on the edge of the couch near a shelf of fragile porcelain figures. Samantha’s mom, Jean, tosses off the warning, “You’re going to knock something off the shelf.” Later that day, Samantha’s three-year-old sister, Tessa, squeezes a loud dog toy while her grandma sleeps nearby. Jean says calmly, “Too loud. You’ll wake up Grandma.”

After delivering that warning, I notice, Jean doesn’t say anything else. She doesn’t press Tessa to stop squeaking the toy. She doesn’t nag or yell. She, as the adult, simply prompts the child to think about their behavior and its consequences, then the mom leaves the child to extrapolate the proper response to that information. This way of communicating with children respects their autonomy and their ability to learn.

Everyday Tool #3: Parent with Questions

Here’s another golden nugget of parenting that I learned in Kugaaruk (and I heard it again in Tanzania with the Hadzabe): turn commands, criticisms, and feedback into questions.

I first witness Sally use this strategy one afternoon after coming home from work. In addition to raising her fifteen-year-old son and helping with her three grandchildren, Sally works full-time at the health clinic. When she walks into the house, tired after her long workday, she finds a complete mess in the living room. Playing cards lay strewn across the floor. Candy wrappers litter the table. But Sally doesn’t get upset. She simply looks at the culprits—Rosy and her friend Samantha—and says in a kind voice, “Who made this mess?”

The parents often state these questions with a half-sarcastic, half-serious tone. The questions aren’t accusatory or denigrating. They aren’t meant to make a child defensive. Instead, the questions are more like a puzzle for the child to solve, a prompt for the child to consider their actions and the potential consequences.

The strategy is genius. And it’s perfect for those moments when you feel like the child is “pushing your buttons” and you don’t want to get angry, but you also don’t know what to do or say. Or when the child acts out and you want to just ignore the behavior but you also just have to say something. The question allows you to get your point across without causing a power struggle.

I start using the question tool as soon as we get back to San Francisco. In particular, I want to reduce the screaming and demanding in our home. So I’ll say, “Who’s screaming at me?” When Rosy complains about food at dinner, I’ll say in a matter-of-fact tone, “Who’s being ungrateful?” After that, I just move on with life. I am not there for an answer or a debate—or even to make her change right away. I just need Rosy to think.

I find this method particularly useful when I try to teach Rosy broad concepts about behavior, such as acting respectfully. I have assumed that Rosy knows the meaning of “respect,” but it turns out, at age 3.5, she has no clue (another example of me overestimating her emotional skills). No one has ever taught her about respect, so I start using the question method to teach her.

One day I pick her up at school and ask her politely, using the consequence tool, to put on some sunscreen. “It’s sunny out,” I say. “You’ll get a sunburn if you don’t use a little sunscreen.” She screams, “No!” and throws the sunscreen onto the sidewalk. The old Michaeleen would have snapped and likely yelled.

But the new Michaeleen pulls out the question tool and stays calm. In a matter-of-fact way, I say, “Who’s being disrespectful?” I look away from Rosy as I say it, because I’m not trying to accuse her—I’m trying to get her to think. And then I move on. I pick up the sunscreen without getting upset and put it back in my purse. I think the interaction ends there. But about a minute later, Rosy says, “Okay. Give me that sunscreen.” And she puts on the sunscreen without a complaint.

By that point, I had been using the question “Who’s being disrespectful?” for about a week. Every time Rosy said something nasty, or screamed that she wanted two cookies instead of one, or just acted bratty, I said in that same matter-of-fact way, “Who’s being disrespectful?”

I couldn’t tell how much she had absorbed. But ten days into this experiment, I finally receive a clue. While the two of us lie next to each other in bed, chatting about the day at school, she suddenly asks, “Mama, what does disrespectful mean?” Aha! She is listening—and she’s thinking.

Everyday Tool #4: Parent with Responsibility

But Maria’s suggestion has a broad meaning behind it, one that I can put to use in our San Francisco home: misbehavior is a child’s way of asking for more responsibility, more ways to contribute to the family, and more freedom. When a child breaks rules, acts demanding, or seems “willful,” their parents need to put them to work. The child is saying, “Hey, Mom, I’m underemployed over here and it doesn’t feel good.”

Everyday Tool #5: Parent Through Action, Not Words

In the vast majority of cultures, parents don’t constantly talk to kids or give them endless choices. Instead, parents take action. That action comes in three flavors:

1. They do what they want the child to do. In the Arctic, Sally’s sister-in-law Marie is ready to go fishing, so she puts on her boots and says to her daughter, “Okay, Victoria, let’s go fishing.” Then she walks out the door and hops on the ATV. Victoria eventually follows.

At lunchtime in the Yucatán, I see a mom put plates of food on the kitchen table and then wait for her two daughters, busy coloring outside, to come and eat. “They will come when they are ready,” she tells me. And she’s right. A few minutes later, both girls come inside and begin to eat, no cajoling needed.

2. They gently help the child do what is needed. In the Yucatán, Rosy climbs onto an adult bike that’s way too tall for her. She’s clearly going to fall off. No one screams at her or yells instructions. Instead, sixteen-year-old Laura comes over and gently takes Rosy’s hand and helps her off the bike. All Rosy needs is a sturdy hand to help—and then a big hug.

3. They change the environment so the child does not need to change their behavior. One evening in the Yucatán, we are all sitting around the dinner table chatting and sharing a pineapple. Suddenly, Rosy grabs a giant butcher’s knife off the table. Nobody gasps or tries to grab the knife from her. Instead, one of the moms, Juanita, walks over calmly, waits for Rosy to set the knife back down, and then moves it out of reach. There’s no arguing. No whining. No break in the harmony of the moment.

In the vast majority of cultures—and throughout human history—parents don’t discuss with children what activity they’ll do next, or debate whether a child wants a peanut butter sandwich or pasta for lunch. Parents don’t ask “Do you want” questions: “Do you want butter or tomato sauce on your pasta?” “Do you want to go to the store with me?” “Do you want to take a bath?” Instead, the parent just takes action. The mom makes black beans for lunch; the dad grabs his jacket and heads out the door to the store; the grandma goes to the bathroom and draws water for bath time.

I think this low-talk parenting style is a big reason kids in these cultures seem so calm. Fewer words create less resistance. Fewer words cause less stress.

Words and commands are energizing and stimulating, and they often incite arguments. Every time we ask a child to do something, we create an opportunity for fighting and negotiating. But when you keep the conversation to a minimum, you keep the energy low. The chance for debate and fighting plummets. Even the raging beast inside Rosy eventually caves in and relaxes.

Everyday Tool #6: Mastering the Art of Ignoring

Elizabeth is a master at ignoring Rosy. Sometimes all she needs to do is ignore Rosy for ten seconds and, poof! Misbehavior ceases. Calmness ensues. Once Rosy realizes that her misbehavior doesn’t deserve attention—that maybe, she doesn’t need our attention—she falls in line and starts cooperating. And Elizabeth welcomes Rosy back into the social circle with a smile or nod.

Watching Elizabeth, I realize that when I thought I was “ignoring” Rosy, I was actually doing just the opposite. I was, in fact, giving Rosy’s bad behavior a lot of attention. I was looking at her. I was making faces and comments. And most ridiculously, I was telling her that I was ignoring her. Rosy even enjoyed my “ignoring” game. What fun!

In many cultures, parents completely ignore misbehavior from children of all ages, says Batja Mesquita, a cross-cultural psychologist at the University of Leuven in Belgium. Parents don’t look at the child, don’t talk to them, and, perhaps most important, give no sign that they even care about the misbehavior (remember, many cultures expect children to misbehave).IV And in doing so, the parents convey a huge amount of information to the children about that behavior, especially in terms of its usefulness and how much the culture values it.

So parents can teach children which emotions aren’t valued in the home by not responding to those emotions. By contrast, responding even negatively to the emotional behavior signals to children that those emotions are important and useful.

In Western culture, Batja says, parents often give children’s anger and misbehavior a large amount of attention. We engage with a misbehaving child, ask them questions, and issue demands.

“If you say, ‘Stop it,’ that’s attention,” Batja says.

Remember the formula. The stronger we respond to a child’s misbehavior—even in a negative way—the more we acknowledge that behavior and, in essence, the more we train the child to behave that way.

So even when I say “Stop” or “Don’t” to Rosy, I reinforce an emotion or behavior with her—a behavior that keeps her from learning to control her emotions and actions. When, of course, I think I am doing the opposite.

But when I actually ignore Rosy—when I actually stop looking at her and stop caring about her misbehavior—something magical happens. Rosy stops misbehaving. “See,” Elizabeth says one afternoon. “Once you really ignored her, she settled down.”

• When in doubt, turn away. The next time your child misbehaves, just walk away. Don’t react or change your expression; simply turn your body around and walk away. What happens? Try the same experiment if you feel a power struggle or an argument approaching. Simply turn around and walk away.

• Practice being silent. Challenge yourself to periods of silence. Tell your children, “We’re going to be quiet now for five minutes.” If they continue to talk, just stay silent yourself. The next day, try ten minutes, then twenty minutes. Work up to an hour or more, and you’ll find yourself luxuriating in incredible peace in your home.

• Turn crankiness into contributions. The next time your toddler or small child acts cranky or demanding, use the responsibility tool and try putting them to work. Get them to help you make a meal. They can stir a pot, crack an egg, chop herbs, or wash vegetables. Or show them how to feed a pet, sweep the floor, or take the garbage out. Have them help fold clothes, rake leaves, or water plants.

• Use responsibilities as rewards. Keep in mind that working together with an adult is a privilege for a child. If a child really wants to join an adult errand or activity, use their desire to teach adultlike behavior. For example, Rosy cherishes grocery shopping. She loves Trader Joe’s. But joining me is a privilege for “big girls” (or at least, that’s how I sell it). So I use her zest for shopping to help her practice mature behavior. If I hear a lot of whining and demanding on grocery day, I might ask, “Do whiny babies get to go to Trader Joe’s?” And within seconds I’ll hear “I stopped, Mama. I stopped.”

• Stop issuing dos and don’ts (or issue them sparingly). This is a tough one because these words are entrenched in our dialogue with children. But even cutting out half of your dos and don’ts will have a big impact on your relationship with your child. I guarantee you’ll argue less, and at the very least, your child will have more opportunities to think and learn instead of simply doing (or not doing) what you tell them.

The next time you would like to change your child’s behavior, pause for a moment. Wait before you talk. Think about why you are issuing this command. What is the consequence of their behavior? Why are you trying to change it? Or even, what do you fear will happen if the child continues that behavior?

Then tell the child the answer to one of these questions, and let them be. That’s it! You don’t need to say anything else. For example, Rosy starts to climb on top of the dog’s back. Instead of saying, “Don’t climb on the dog’s back,” I pause and think, What will happen if Rosy climbs on the dog’s back? Then I say to Rosy, “If you climb on her back, you will hurt her,” or even “Ow, Rosy, you are hurting the dog.”

• If you really want to change how you communicate with your children, try this experiment. During a regular morning or evening, take out your smartphone and use it to record your time with the kids. Set it on the kitchen counter while you make dinner or on the table while you eat. Then record for long enough that you and your kids forget about the phone. The next day, go and listen to the recording.

Learn the art of ignoring. Is there some misbehavior or bad habits that you’d like to eliminate? Maybe it’s whining, or excessive demanding. Or maybe it’s mistreating the dog, or throwing silverware at dinner. Try this approach for one to two weeks, and I’m confident the behavior will decrease, if not cease altogether. Each time the child displays the unwanted behavior, do the following:

Keep your expression flat. Don’t flinch or react in the slightest. Pretend like you can’t even hear or see them. With this flat expression, look into the horizon above the child’s head or to their side.

Then walk away. Just turn around and walk away until the child is out of sight.

Now, you don’t have to be mean to the child or hurt their feelings. You’re still responding to their needs and you’re not acting angrily toward them. You simply aren’t responding emotionally to their misbehavior. You are staying neutral and showing them that you have zero interest in that behavior.

Summary for Chapter 10: Tools for Changing Behavior

Ideas to Remember

• American parents tend to rely on verbal instruction and explanations to change children’s behavior. But words are often the least effective way to communicate with children, especially young children. • Children’s emotions mirror our emotions. • If you want your child to be calm, be quiet and gentle. Use few or no words (which are stimulating). • If you want your child to be loud and have high energy, have high energy yourself. Use many words. • Commands and lectures often cause power struggles, negotiations, and cycles of anger. • We can break out of the anger cycle and power struggles by using nonverbal tools or by helping the child to think instead of telling them what to do.

Tips and Tools

• Taming tantrums. Tantrums go away if we respond to a child with calmness. Next time a child has an emotional outburst, stay quiet and try one of these tools: • Energy. In the calmest, lowest-energy state possible, simply stand near the child, silently, and show them that you are close by, supporting them. • Physicality. Reach out and gently touch the child on the shoulder or offer a hand. Sometimes a soft, calm touch is all a child needs to calm down. • Awe. Help the child replace their anger with the emotion of awe. Look around and find something beautiful. Tell the child, in the calmest, most gentle voice, “Oh wow, the moon is so beautiful tonight. Do you see it?” • Outside. If the child still won’t calm down, take them outside for some fresh air. Gently lead them outside or pick them up. • Changing behavior and transmitting values. Instead of telling the child “Don’t,” prompt the child to think and figure out the proper behavior themselves with: • The look. Take whatever you want to say to a misbehaving child and channel it into your facial expression. Open your eyes wide, scrunch up your nose, or shake your head. Then shoot the look over to the child. • Consequence puzzle. Calmly state the consequences of the child’s actions, then walk away (e.g., “You’re going to fall off and hurt yourself”). • Question. Instead of issuing a command or instruction, ask the child a question (e.g., “Who’s being mean to Freddie?” when a child hits a sibling, or “Who’s being disrespectful?” when a child ignores a request). • Responsibility. Give a misbehaving child a task to do (e.g., say to a whining child in the morning: “Come over and help me make your lunch”). • Action. Instead of asking a child to do a task (e.g., leave the house), just do the task yourself. The kid will follow.

Tags: key-points

While in the Arctic, I noticed that a big chunk of Inuit parenting happens well after a child misbehaves. Not in the moment and not immediately after, but later on, when everyone has calmed down. In these peaceful moments, children are more open to learning, observes eighty-nine-year-old Eenoapik Sageatook, from Iqaluit, Canada. When a child is upset or defying the parent, the child is too emotionally charged to listen. So there’s no reason to try to teach the child a “big lesson” in those moments. “You have to remain calm and wait for the child to calm down. Then you can teach the child,” she says.

CHAPTER 11 Tools for Sculpting Behavior: Stories

In addition to transmitting important skills, stories also transmit cultural values to children. For tens of thousands of years, perhaps longer, parents have used oral stories to teach a child how to behave like a good member of their community. Today, modern hunter-gatherer groups use stories to teach sharing, respect for different genders, anger control, and how to stay safe around their homes.

A big part of childhood, in both traditional Celtic and traditional Inuit cultures, involves learning how to treat these mysterious creatures—how to avoid them, respect them, or keep them happy. Parents and grandparents pass down knowledge through these captivating, sometimes scary stories. In the process, children learn to respect their parents and stay safe. “The stories help children understand how serious parents are about needing to behave and listen,” Myna says.

Note: Use ai to find out more about these stories structure them nicely for kids to read and add some images.

Tags: project idea

About a month after the trip to the Arctic, Rosy and I are in the kitchen, preparing dinner. She wants an item from the refrigerator. So she grabs her step stool, walks over to the refrigerator, and climbs up. Then she proceeds to stand there, with the refrigerator door wide open, for five minutes. I tell her to close the door, and she ignores me. I explain several times how she’s wasting energy. It’s like I’m talking to a wall. So I try pleading in a sweet, nice voice. Still, she ignores me. I can feel my anger rising up in my belly. A power struggle is imminent.

But I don’t want to argue—again. I’m so tired of arguing. I’m just about ready to issue some kind of threat, when Goota Jaw and the sea monster pop into my head. One monster in the house couldn’t hurt, I think*. Why the hell not, Michaeleen?*

So with a half-serious, half-playful tone, I say, “You know? There’s a monster inside the refrigerator, and if he warms up, he’s going to get bigger and bigger and come get you.”

Then I point into the refrigerator, make my eyes wide, and exclaim, “Oh my goodness. There he is!”

Holy moly! You should have seen the look on Rosy’s face. She closes the refrigerator door faster than a jackrabbit. Then she turns around with a big smile on her face and says, “Mama, tell me more about the monster in there.”

Since that day, we have brought all sorts of monsters into our house. Rosy can’t get enough of them. Storytelling has become our family’s go-to parenting tool. She calls the stories “take-aways” because the protagonist—a little girl who’s about three years old—often gets taken away (just as Celtic and Inuit kids do at the hands of water horses and sea monsters). “Mama, tell me a take-away,” she says every night before she falls asleep. Sometimes she even asks me to make them scarier, I kid you not.

Note: The lesson is also that people should get more creative with these stories. Come up with some as you go.

• Tell family history stories. Try telling stories about your own childhood or your family’s origin stories. “Inuit highly value knowledge of our family trees and connecting to our relatives’ lives,” says Corina Kramer, of Kotzebue, Alaska. “In fact, when we traditionally introduce ourselves, we start by saying our name, who our grandparents and parents are, and which village our family is from.” Children of all ages love to hear about what their parents and grandparents did when they were younger. They’re drawn like magnets to these stories.

Tell your children stories about where you were born, where you grew up, or where you and your spouse got married. Recount lessons you learned from making mistakes or from jobs you had as a teenager and young adult. Build up your family’s stories by adding “characters,” such as grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, family friends, and pets.

Over the course of writing this book, I have noticed a remarkable trend with Rosy: she is more likely to comply with a request if I first tell her that my mom made me do the same dreaded task during my childhood. For example, when Rosy refuses to eat asparagus at dinner, I say something like “When I was four years old, Granana made me eat asparagus, too. Man, I didn’t like that, but I ate them because she’s the boss.” Then, voilà! Rosy starts popping the asparagus in her mouth.

• Make science come to life. Many ideas in biology, chemistry, and physics sound stranger than fiction—and just as interesting to young children. So why not use science knowledge as a way to create nonfiction stories? Just remember to use simple, relatable words, especially ones that paint a picture or will tickle the child’s imagination.

For example, we help Rosy brush her teeth by telling her stories of the “critters” inside her mouth. They are so tiny you can’t see them (yes, they are bacteria). But they live on your teeth, and you have to brush them off or they’ll punch holes in your teeth at night and turn them black. In essence, we take real science and jazz it up with imagery, anthropomorphism, and hyperbole.

• Embrace anthropomorphism. The next time you find yourself struggling with a child or having difficulties “encouraging” a certain behavior, try this simple trick. Look around you, find the nearest inanimate object (even a shoe will do), and bring that object to life. Pretend it can talk. Have the object tell your child what you need her to do. With toddlers, I bet this trick will work nine out of ten times.

• Let monsters move in. To harness the full power of storytelling, bring monsters into your home. You can make them fun with a dash of danger, or pretty scary with a dash of fun. “Scary” is a wide spectrum. The right level of “scary” in your household will depend on your child, their age, their disposition, and their experiences. Pay attention to your child’s reaction and adjust accordingly. But, as Celtic researcher Sharon P. MacLeod says, “Children love to be scared!”

CHAPTER 12 Tools for Sculpting Behavior: Dramas

Over and over again, Myna’s mom, dad, and grandparents executed one key parenting tool, which aimed to increase the child’s executive function. Jean called the tool “dramas.” Here’s how they work. When a child acts in anger—say, she hits someone or attacks a sibling—the parent may say something like “Ow! That hurts,” or “Ow, you’re hurting your brother,” to show the consequences of the child’s action. But there’s no yelling, no punishments.

Instead, the parent waits. Then in a peaceful, calm moment, the parent stages a reenactment of what happened when the child misbehaved. Typically the performance starts with a question, tempting the child to do something she knows she shouldn’t. For example, if the child hits others, the mom may start a drama by asking, “Why don’t you hit me?”

Then the child has to think: “What should I do?” If the child takes the bait and hits the mom, the mom doesn’t scold or yell, but she performs a reenactment of what happened, using a slightly playful, fun tone. She acts out the consequences. “Ow! That hurts!” she might exclaim.

The mom continues to emphasize the consequences by asking follow-up questions to the child. For example: “Don’t you like me?” or “Are you a baby?” These questions continue to trigger thought. They also link the desired behavior with maturity and the undesirable behavior with infancy. The questions convey the idea that hitting hurts people’s feelings, and “big kids” wouldn’t hit. And the mom asks all the questions with a hint of playfulness.

A parent will stage these dramas for whatever problematic behavior or transition a young child might be going through, Jean Briggs writes. For example, if a toddler has problems sharing with a sibling, a dad may stage a “sharing drama” by tempting the child to be greedy. “Don’t share your food with your brother,” the dad might say one afternoon to the child while they’re eating. Then if the child goes ahead and doesn’t share, the dad acts out the consequences. “You don’t like your brother? Poor thing, he’s hungry.”

The parent repeats the drama, from time to time, until the child stops falling for the traps. When the child acts properly, the parent may praise the behavior with a simple “Look how generous Chubby Maata is,” Jean documents.

Dramas give kids a chance to do something that, in Western culture, they don’t often get the opportunity to do: practice fixing their mistakes. While taking part in a drama, kids can practice controlling their anger. Practice being kind to a sibling. Practice sharing with a friend. Practice not hitting Mama. Practice. Practice. (Remember, the first ingredient to teaching a skill or value? Practice.)

In these dramas, children get to try out different responses to charged situations. Since their parent is relaxed and slightly playful, the child doesn’t need to fear making a mistake. The child can act out the consequences of poor behavior in a moment when they feel calm, not upset. So they’re more receptive to learning and thinking.

Practice is especially important when kids are learning how to control anger, says neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett. Because once anger has already erupted, squelching it is not easy for anyone, children or adults.

“There’s a big misconception that you can easily stop yourself when you’re already mad,” Lisa says. “But when you try to control your emotions in the moment and you want to change the feeling, that’s a really hard thing to do.”

But if you practice feeling awe or gratitude when you’re not angry, you’ll have a better chance of accessing those emotions when you start to feel angry managing your anger in those hot-button moments. “That practice is essentially helping to rewire your brain to be able to make a different emotion [besides anger] much more easily,” she says.

For children, the dramas give them the chance to flex and strengthen self-control circuitry in their brains. Instead of getting angry, children learn to think. Instead of reacting, children learn to maintain their equilibrium.

Play makes a powerful parenting tool for changing behavior, one that many parents overlook, says psychologist Laura Markham. “Play is how children learn about the world. Play is their work.”

Children use play to recover from hard experiences throughout the day and “emotional upheavals,” says psychologist Larry Cohen. After an argument with a parent, play helps to release tension and move on. The air clears, the atmosphere lightens, and the parent and child are released from their locked-in cycle of anger and misbehavior.

“A big source of problems is this tension between a child and parent,” Larry says. And the usual responses to misbehavior, such as lecturing, reasoning, or yelling—even in their mildest forms—build up tension. “Play reduces the tension. That’s why I love it.”

When a child has a tough time with a particular task, such as getting out of bed in the morning, doing their homework, or sharing with a sibling, Larry recommends a technique that’s remarkably similar to the dramas. “I tell parents to bring the problem into the play zone,” Larry says. The play zone makes a great tool for children of all ages, from toddlers to teens. (We’ll see how it works in the “Try It” section.) Once the tension is released through play, the problematic behavior often fades away on its own, Larry notes.

This chapter is really about converting problems into play and discipline into practice. And there are a cornucopia of ways to do that. No matter the route you go, keep two rules in mind:

1. 1. Make sure neither you nor the child feels upset, angry, or emotionally charged when you work with these tools. Play happens when everyone is relaxed and peaceful.
2. 2. Keep the tone fun and light. Try to keep a smile on your face or a wink in your eye. This is not the time for lessons or lectures. This is the time for kids to feel safe to misbehave and try out new skills, without any worry of upsetting parents.

• Put on a puppet show. The next time your child struggles with a task or some facet of emotional control, try reenacting the problem with a puppet show. Take two stuffed animals—or even a pair of socks—and make them into characters who aren’t related to you and your child. For example, with Rosy I often use Mango (our dog) as one character and Louis (the neighbor’s dog) as the second character. This approach will help ensure the child feels relaxed and not like they’re being disciplined or lectured. Then set the scene, act out the problematic activity, and then act out the consequences of that behavior.

• Bring the problem to the play zone. Earlier I mentioned psychologist Larry Cohen’s concept of a play zone, a technique which he advises using with children of all ages, even teenagers. To see how it works, let’s look at a common problem: getting a child to calm down at bedtime. To break the cycle of tension around bedtime, Larry says, wait for a calm, peaceful moment during the day (not at bedtime) and say something like this to the child: “Hey, Rosy, I’ve noticed there’s been a lot of arguing around bedtime. Let’s play a game about that.”

• Stage a drama. To see how dramas can work, let’s look at a chronic problem in our house: hitting. When Rosy hits me now, no matter how hard she slaps, I don’t get angry anymore. I try with all my heart to ignore it. Just completely ignore it. And if I can’t, I say only “Ow, that hurt me” in the calmest way possible (just like Sally did when Caleb scratched her face).

Then later, when we are both calm and relaxed, I put on little hitting dramas. I go to Rosy and ask her to hit me. If she takes the bait, I act out the consequences again. I say in a dramatic way, “Ooh, that hurts! Goodness that hurts!” to show her that hitting causes pain, physically and emotionally.

I can see the little gears in her brain churning. “Wait! Am I hurting Mom’s feelings?” she seems to think. (And I can see that Rosy doesn’t mean to push my buttons. She cares about my feelings. She just didn’t realize how much the hitting hurt!)

Then I ask her this one question, with an exaggerated sense of pain and suffering: “Don’t you like me?” Often she will respond with something supersweet and wonderful like “No, I love you, Mama.”

To help her further understand the consequences of hitting, I connect the misbehavior to immaturity. The conversation typically goes something like this:

• Me: “Are you a baby?” • Rosy: “No, Mama, I’m a big girl.” • Me: “Do big girls hit?” • Rosy: “No, Mama.”I

Summary for Chapters 11 and 12: Sculpt Behavior with Stories and Dramas

Ideas to Remember

• When a child feels upset, they will have a hard time listening and learning. • When a child feels relaxed and safe from punishment, they are open to learning new rules and fixing mistakes. • If the child isn’t cooperating over an issue (e.g., doing their homework), there’s likely tension between the parent and child over the issue. Once this tension resolves, through play or a story, a child will cooperate and behave better. • Children love to learn through oral stories, especially when these stories include characters, experiences, and objects from their real lives. They have a natural inclination to learn this way. For example, children love to: • Hear about their family’s history and their parents’ childhoods. • Imagine objects coming to life and making mistakes. • Imagine ghosts, monsters, fairies, and other supernatural creatures living around them and helping them learn proper behavior. • Children love to learn through play. It’s how they release tension and practice proper behavior. Children love to reenact problematic behavior or mistakes and watch the consequences unfold in a fun, low-stress environment (without fear of punishment).

Tips and Tools

Instead of using lectures and adult logic to change a child’s behavior or teach them a value, wait for a calm, relaxed moment and try one of these tools:

• Tell a story from your childhood. Explain how you and your parents handled a mistake, problem, or misbehavior. Were you punished? How did you react? • Put on a puppet show. Get a stuffed animal or a pair of socks to act out the consequences of the child’s behavior and how you would like them to behave. Have them play one of the characters in the show. • Bring the problem into the play zone. Tell the child, “I noticed we’ve been arguing a lot about homework [or whatever problem you have]. Let’s play a game about it. Who do you want to play? Me or you?” Then reenact in a fun way what happens during the argument. Don’t be afraid to exaggerate and act outrageous. The goal is to laugh and release tension built up over the issue. • Use a monster story. Create a monster that hides out near your house. Tell the child the monster is watching and if the child misbehaves in a particular way, the monster will come and take them away (for only a few days). • Bring an inanimate object to life. Have a stuffed animal, piece of clothing, or other inanimate object help you coax a child to complete a task. Have the object do the task itself (e.g., brush a stuffed animal’s teeth) or have the object ask the child to do a task (e.g., have a toothbrush ask the child to brush their teeth).

Tags: key-points

SECTION 4 Hadzabe Health

CHAPTER 13 How Did Our Ancient Ancestors Parent?

During the short time I spend with the Hadzabe families, I can see the gift economy everywhere—in how they treat the animals they hunted, how they share every single plant they foraged, how they waste basically no food, and how they generate essentially no trash. I also see the gift economy in their relationship with their children. The parents don’t aim to transform the children into some ideal, as fast as possible, through control and domination. Rather, they focus on giving to each other. The parent continually gives the child gifts of love, companionship, and food, and in return, the parent expects a “bundle of responsibilities.” We coexist together, with minimal interference and mutual respect; and through reciprocity, we love and connect. In my clumsy Western way, I created a motto for this relationship style: You go about your business and I’ll go about mine, and we’ll always look for ways to help each other as much as possible.

TEAM 3 Ancient Antidote for Anxiety and Stress

When parents do need to remind a child of a rule or influence their actions, then the parent does it in a way that’s subtle and indirect—and in a way that minimizes conflict. The parent allows the child to maintain a sense of agency so the child doesn’t feel controlled or dominated. The parent uses questions, consequences, and puzzles. The parent could also change their own behavior (e.g., walk away from a hitting child instead of telling the child to stop hitting), change the environment around the child (e.g., remove an iPad from the room if the child can’t use it wisely, instead of telling them not to use it), or silently help the child handle an unsafe situation (e.g., stand next to a child while they climb a wall and gently hold their hand or spot them, instead of telling them to get down off the wall).

First, I was giving Rosy tasks that were way too complicated for her (e.g., “Clean up the living room,” “Fold the laundry,” or “Come help with the dishes”). Instead, it works much better if I ask her to do a very, very small subtask of what I’m already doing (e.g., “Put this book on the shelf,” as I hand her a book; “Put this shirt in your drawer,” as I hand her a shirt; “Put this bowl in the dishwasher,” as I hand her a dish). With such easy commands, Rosy is much less likely to resist, and much more likely to succeed in accomplishing the task.

I was also padding the request with way too much flowery, unnecessary language (e.g., “Rosy, would you mind helping clear the dinner table?” or “Rosy, do you want to take this coffee to your dad?”). Instead, I can put the dirty dinner plate in Rosy’s hand and say, “Put this in the kitchen,” or hand her the coffee cup and say, “Take this coffee to Dadda.” That’s it! So simple. So clear. And so much more likely to work.

By sprinkling these requests into daily activities, parents train the children to orient their activities and attention toward others, says psychologist Sheina Lew-Levy. Children learn to be on the lookout for what other people need, and then to hop in and help whenever they can.

When the parents can’t “keep an eye” on a kid themselves, they ensure that an older child goes along to help. Parents train children to take care of younger siblings as soon as kids start walking. And so, by the time kids reach Belie’s age, five or six, they’re highly capable caretakers. They know how to keep the toddlers safe, feed them, and settle them when they cry. At the same time, older children (siblings and friends) return the favor by looking after the younger children. So there’s a beautiful hierarchy of love and support. Teenagers help the younger kids; younger kids help the toddlers; and everyone helps the babies.

Note: Beautiful image

Autonomy has tremendous benefits for kids of all ages. Oodles of studies have linked autonomy to a slew of desired traits for kids, including inner drive, long-term motivation, independence, confidence, and better executive function. Basically, every trait I see in Belie. As a child gets older, autonomy is connected to better performance in school, increased chance of career success, and decreased risk of drug and alcohol abuse. “Like exercise and sleep, it appears to be good for virtually everything,” neuropsychologist William Stixrud and educator Ned Johnson write in their book, The Self-Driven Child.

But my bossiness has another disadvantage: it slows down Rosy’s growth, both physically and mentally. The Hadzabe families have noticed this effect on children. “Because we give children so much freedom and because they participate in all activities from an early age, our children are independent much earlier than in most societies,” a group of elders explained in the book Hadzabe: By the Light of a Million Fires.

What’s more, when children don’t have enough autonomy, they often feel powerless over their lives. “Many [American] kids feel that way all the time,” Bill and Ned write in The Self-Driven Child. That feeling causes stress, and over time, that chronic stress can turn into anxiety and depression. Lack of autonomy is likely a key reason for the high prevalence of anxiety and depression among American children and teenagers, the pair write.

“The biggest gift parents can give their children is the opportunity to make their own decisions,” psychologist Holly Schiffrin says. “Parents who ‘help’ their children too much stress themselves out and leave their kids ill-prepared to be adults.”

To review, there are two main ways that we can help increase our child’s autonomy while also reducing conflict and resistance:

1. 1. Decrease your commands and other verbal input (e.g., questions, requests, choices).
2. 2. Empower the child by training them to handle obstacles and dangers, which in turn allows you to reduce your commands.

• Try three commands per hour. Grab your phone and set the timer for twenty minutes. During this time, restrict yourself to one verbal command to your child. Resist the urge to tell the child anything: what to do, eat, say, or how to act. This includes asking questions about what the child wants or what they need. If you absolutely have to change their behavior, do it nonverbally; use actions or facial expressions. Try with all your heart to let the child be, even if they break “rules” or do something you can’t stand. (Remember, it’s only twenty minutes.)

If the child ends up in what looks like an unsafe situation, wait just a beat and see if the child can help themselves before you intervene. If not, go over and remove the physical danger or move the child.

So when we return home from Tanzania, I simply stop answering for her or telling her what to say (or at least, I try very hard not to do these things). As a result, sometimes Rosy seems rude to other people. But I’m confident that she’ll learn and figure out the appropriate behavior (with the formula). And if I really feel like she should have shown gratitude, I will ask her afterward: “What would a big girl have done?” and leave it at that.

For older children, make it your goal to let your child speak whenever possible and increasingly so as their confidence and abilities grow. Let them order at restaurants, set up after-school activities, settle disputes with friends and, when possible, talk with teachers, coaches, and instructors about successes and mistakes. If the child isn’t accustomed to handling these situations on their own, go along with them to help. Let the child know ahead of time that they are capable of speaking for themselves and that you have confidence in them, and then simply go with them as a support if they need it. Resist the urge to interrupt. “At a store, or with an instructor or coach, you might even physically hang back and avoid eye contact so that it’s clear to the adult that your child will be doing the talking,” former Stanford dean Julie Lythcott-Haims writes in her book How to Raise an Adult.

• Let children handle their own arguments. Inuit parents in the Arctic told me this advice over and over again. Essentially, when children argue among themselves, just step back and don’t interfere. Your meddling will only make the argument worse and prevent children from learning how to settle their own disputes. Jump in only if the children start hurting each other (as in, really hurting each other). If one kid comes over and complains about another kid, nod and say, “Hmm.” Kids know what to do. They don’t need more validations of their feelings. They need autonomy.

• Drop a rule. Is there something your child really wants to do alone, without your help, but you always tag along or stop them? Maybe it’s biking to school or going to the corner market. Maybe it’s using the kitchen knife, cooking on the grill, or making pasta. Take a tip from Maria in the Yucatán: Let the child do it! And while they do it, form an invisible safety net around them. If they leave the house, wait-a-bit, then follow stealthily behind (or have an older sibling do it). If they want to use a knife or similar tool, modify the situation so that the child won’t hurt themselves. Give the child an easy food to cut (e.g., celery, strawberries), offer a dull knife, or let them use a real knife for thirty seconds or so. Then switch out the sharp knife for a dull one. In all these situations, the goal is the same: give the child a little more freedom and real practice at learning a new skill.

a. Introduce your child to your neighbors. This includes neighbors of all ages. Have neighbors over for dinner or for coffee (or a beer). Have your kids bake cookies or meals for neighbors and then deliver them together. (This also makes a great activity for practicing sharing and generosity.)

b. Host a block party. After meeting everyone at a block party, neighbors become acquainted with the kids on the block and will be more likely to keep an eye out for them during their autonomous adventures.

c. Encourage your kids to play with the kids in the neighborhood. Invite the neighbor kids over to play or watch a movie. Become friends with their parents and host dinner parties with them all. Even a young kid, age three or so, can run over to a neighbor’s house to play on their own (or with the invisible safety net). As we’ll learn in the next section, neighbor kids and parents can become important alloparents, creating a circle of physical and emotional safety around kids.

Summary for Chapter 14: How to Raise a Confident Child

Ideas to Remember

• Like adults, kids and toddlers don’t like to be bossed around. Children, at every age, have a natural inclination to learn autonomously without interference. • When we boss kids around, we undermine their confidence and self-reliance. • When we give children autonomy and minimize instruction to them, we send the message that they are self-sufficient and can handle problems on their own. • The best way to protect a child from anxiety and stress is to give them autonomy. • Independence and autonomy are different concepts.

• An independent child is disconnected from others and not responsible for anyone except themselves. • An autonomous child governs their own actions and makes their own decisions, but they have a constant connection to their family and friends. They are expected to help, share, and be kind. They are expected to give back to the group whenever possible.

Tips and Tools

• Pay attention to how frequently you instruct your child. Take out your phone and set it for twenty minutes. Count how many questions, comments, and demands you make to your child during that time. • Go for three commands an hour. Try to limit your verbal instructions to three per hour, especially during activities that trigger conflict and arguments (e.g., getting ready for school, getting ready for bed). Use commands only to teach children helpfulness, generosity, and other responsibilities to the family. • Find an autonomy zone. Identify places around your town where toddlers and kids can practice autonomy, where you can watch them from a distance and interfere minimally. Try parks and playgrounds with open spaces, grassy fields, and beaches. Bring a magazine or work and let the kids play for a few hours. • Make your yard and neighborhood an autonomy zone. Train your child to handle dangers around your home and neighborhood. Build an “invisible safety net” by getting to know your neighbors and their children. • Stop being a ventriloquist. Make it a goal to stop speaking for your child or telling them what to say. Let them answer questions directed at them, order at restaurants, decide when to say “Please” and “Thank you.” Work toward having them handle all conversations themselves, including discussions with teachers, coaches, and instructors.

Tags: key-points

CHAPTER 15 Ancient Antidote for Depression

Sarah believes that these extra parents were essential for human evolution. Over the course of her career, she has acquired an impressive trove of evidence to back up this hypothesis. She believes that humans evolved to share the duties of childcare as a group. At the same time, human offspring evolved to attach to, bond with, and be raised by a handful of people—not just two.

At first blush, you might think that relatives serve as the critical alloparents in hunter-gatherer communities. But in many cultures, families move around frequently and often find themselves living far away from kin.

More recently, researchers began to look outside the family for alloparents. And lo and behold, they found a whole menagerie of caretakers who are related to the child only through proximity and love.

Note: Other kids. But I’m assuming that might be other groups too. Friends?

Abigail thinks that young children, about five years older than another child, can be the best teachers out there—way better than parents themselves. The youngsters have several big advantages over us old folks, she points out. They have more energy than parents. They naturally integrate play and pretend into their “teaching exercises,” so learning is more fun. And their skill level at a task more closely matches that of a younger child.

For Homo sapiens, social support works a bit like a miracle drug. It provides health benefits that ripple through our entire bodies, from our minds into our blood, through our hearts, and into our bones. Over the past decades, study after study has linked meaningful friendships and camaraderie to all kinds of health benefits. They decrease our risk for cardiovascular disease; boost our immune systems; and protect us from stress, anxiety, and depression. And when we do find ourselves trapped with a mental health problem, the more that we believe we have friends and families supporting us, the better chance we have of recovering from anxiety and depression.

On the flip side, a lack of social support worsens mental health problems, forming a sort of snowball effect, Bert says. Loneliness can cause anxiety, depression, and sleep problems, which in turn cause more loneliness. “When people don’t have social support, their bodies have signs of physical stress. They look like they’re being threatened. Like people are out to get them,” Bert says.

Social support is so important for physical health that, in one study, having strong relationships correlated just as strongly with a longer life expectancy as being physically active or cutting out smoking. In other words, the time and energy you spend planting and cultivating deep, fulfilling friendships is likely just as crucial to your overall well-being as your afternoon run (or even not smoking).

First of all, we can show these people how much we value and appreciate the work they do for our families. For teachers and day care providers, we can regularly acknowledge their efforts by encouraging our children to make them thank-you cards and bake them thank-you treats. We can honor their birthdays or prepare homemade gifts for the holidays. And if a teacher or coach shows special interest in a child, we can even offer to have them over for dinner or bring them a special meal.

• Tolerate your relatives (or learn to value their contributions). Depending on your family, this can be a tough one. In my own family, there can be conflict and tension. But I see how much everyone loves Rosy—and how much she loves them. And so I decided to stop picking fights, and learn to coexist peacefully (most of the time).

In general, Matt and I have made it a priority to include our families in Rosy’s life as much as possible. We try to visit extended family for holidays and always welcome them into our home. Each summer we help organize a vacation with Matt’s siblings and all their kids. And these reunions have been a blast!

Summary for Chapter 15: How to Protect Children from Depression

Ideas to Remember

• Babies and children are designed to be raised by many types of people. From grandparents and aunties to nannies and neighbors, they are all important. • This network of love and support helps the child see the world as supportive and kind, which protects them from depression and mental health problems. • One or two extra alloparents can make a big difference in a child’s life. • Other children make fantastic alloparents and tend to be better teachers and playmates than adults. Children naturally integrate play into learning and have skill levels closer to other children than adults have. • Deep, close friendships are likely just as important for you and your child’s health as exercising and eating healthy.

Tips and Tools

• Build a network of aunts and uncles. Work together with three or four other families to share after-school care. Have each family be responsible for a day each week. This network provides emotional support for kids and breaks for parents. • Create MAPs (Multi-age playgroups). Encourage your child to play with kids, of all ages, around the neighborhood. Invite other families over for dinner or cocktails. Organize big neighborhood playgroups on the weekend, where kids of all ages are invited to play in your yard or at a nearby park. • Train up mini-alloparents. Teach older children to take care of younger siblings, starting at a young age. Connect their care to their growing maturity (e.g., “You’re helping your brother because you’re a big girl now”). Reward the child for their care by increasing their responsibility over time. • Value the alloparents you already have. Work together with your child to show appreciation for nannies, day care providers, teachers, and coaches. Make them thank-you notes, treats, and special meals. Treat them as valued family members. Model generosity and respect.

Tags: key-points

SECTION 5 Western Parenting 2.0

TEAM 4 A New Paradigm for Western Parents

Minimal interference not only reduces conflict, it also gives children oodles of practice at entertaining and taking care of themselves. They become incredibly skilled at the art of solitary absorption and self-generated fun. They learn to figure out problems on their own, settle their own disputes, make up their own games, prepare their own snacks, even get their own gosh-darn milk. And they become much less demanding along the way. In essence, if a parent doesn’t demand and control a child’s attention, the child won’t demand and control the parent’s attention.

CHAPTER 16 Sleep

We think that in order to be healthy, we have to sleep about eight hours each night, in one uninterrupted chunk. And yet, not that long ago, the vast majority of people in Western culture didn’t sleep like this at all. Up until the late nineteenth century, “normal” sleep was segmented. Most people slept in two chunks, each for about four hours. One segment occurred before midnight, the other after midnight. And in between people did all sorts of tasks. As historian A. Roger Ekirch writes: “They rose to perform chores, tend to sick children, raid a neighbor’s apple orchard. Others, remaining abed, recited prayers and pondered dreams.”

There’s even evidence that segmented sleep dates back thousands of years in Western culture. In the first century BC, the Roman poet Virgil wrote about the “hour which terminates the first sleep, when the car of Night had as yet performed but half its course,” in his epic poem the Aeneid.

Basically all the “sleep rules,” as we know them now, came into fashion in the nineteenth century. During the Industrial Revolution, workers needed to arrive at factories at a certain time in the morning, no matter when the sun rose or set. As a result, “sleep had to be subjected to increasing levels of control,” Ben writes in his book Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created Our Restless World.

Before then, people tended to follow their biological signals: Sleep when you’re tired and wake up when you’re rested. “This is worth reiterating: virtually nothing about our standard model of sleep existed as we know it two centuries ago,” Ben writes.

If you recognize your own household in this story, take heart, tired parent. One great thing about kids is how quickly they can change. No matter how deep you’ve dug yourself into a hole, you can always get out of it. You can always retrain a child—and retrain them quite easily. How? By using the formula for good.

I can train Rosy to have the same skill, to detect her tired signals and then take herself to bed when she feels them. But to do that, I have to “let her go,” as the interpreter David Mark Makia told me in Tanzania. I have to give up (almost all) control over Rosy’s sleep schedule. I have to throw out the bedtime routine in favor of giving Rosy the space to develop the skill of listening to her biological cues. I can help her learn that skill, but I have to minimally interfere. At the end of the day (no pun intended), it will be up to her when she goes to sleep.

I’m not going to lie to you. That whole plan scares the bejesus out of me. But what if she never goes to sleep? Or what if she doesn’t get up in the morning? We are headed into Dante’s Inferno, for sure.

And so I decide to try the scheme for a week, and if it doesn’t work, I will go back to our routine.

With great trepidation, I close my eyes, grab Rosy’s hand, and jump off the sleep schedule cliff.

To my utmost surprise, Rosy flies!

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The formula works way better—and faster—than I predict. The first few nights, Rosy stays up late, until about 10:30 or 11:00 p.m. But she still wakes up easily in the morning. By night four, she goes to bed on time, and by day seven, she gets ready for bed almost entirely on her own. No more arguments. No more screaming. No more running around like a wild cat.

Then on day ten, a miracle occurs at the Doucleff household. At around seven p.m., Rosy walks upstairs, all by herself, gets in bed, and goes to sleep.

“Did you see that?” Matt asks.

“Yes,” I say cautiously.

“Nights have been so easy.”

“I know. I know. Don’t jinx it.”

Since that night, we have had essentially zero problems with Rosy at bedtime. Zero. The formula transformed her into a super sleeper.

So how did I do it?

Around eight o’clock each night, I began to watch Rosy like a hawk. When I detected her tired signals (e.g., rubbing her eyes, sucking her thumb, whining more), I turned down the lights in the house. I’d noticed how the darkness in Tanzania really calmed her down. Then I executed the following procedure:

1. Model. I said, very calmly, “I’m tired. My body is telling me I’m tired. I’m going to bed.” I went upstairs and got myself ready for bed (although I wasn’t going to sleep). I brushed my teeth. Flossed. Put on my pajamas. Then I got into her bed, and started reading a book. And I waited.

2. Acknowledge. When she came upstairs and laid next to me, I gave her a bit of positive attention. I hugged her and smiled at her. Then I connected the desired behavior to maturity with one question: “Rosy, what would a big girl do now?” I stayed in the bed and continued to model what I wanted her to do. I never forced her to get ready for bed but rather encouraged her with the tools we’ve learned.

3. Practice. Once she got her pj’s on and brushed her teeth, I helped her fall asleep by rubbing her back. I stayed calm the whole time and never pushed. If she talked or whined, I simply said, “Let’s be quiet and still so our bodies and minds can calm down and go to sleep. I’m tired.”

Night after night, we both practiced being calm and feeling tiredness in our bodies. A few nights, I actually fell asleep myself.

In a matter of three weeks, we turned one of the most difficult parenting issues in our lives into a nothing burger. And along the way, I sharpened my TEAM parenting skills:

Togetherness: We did bedtime together.

Encourage: I encouraged Rosy to go to sleep instead of forcing her at a particular time.

Autonomy: Rosy decided, on her own, when to go upstairs to go to sleep.

Minimize interference: Instead of controlling Rosy’s behavior, I did what was minimally required to help her learn a valuable life skill.