Darby Fox: Shifting from Control and Conflict to Structure and Nurture to Raise Accountable Young Adults

In this interview, Darby Fox talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about her book, Rethinking Your Teenager: Shifting from Control and Conflict to Structure and Nurture to Raise Accountable Young Adults.

“Discipline means to teach, not to preach.” ~Darby Fox

Darby has over two decades’ worth of experience working with teenagers and their families, specializing with this group as a therapist. She originally intended to work with children, but got into working with teenagers, as she was not only interested in doing so but also realized that there weren’t that many people so working with that age group. As part of that work, she needed to work with parents, and as she did so, she thought that there was a way for both parents and adolescents to thrive during this adolescent period, rather than just merely surviving this period and just “get over it.” 

Darby remarks that, as everyone has been a teenager, parents think back on their own teenage experiences and use this to interact with their teenagers, by attempting to control their behavior so that their children will not make the same perceived mistakes that they made while they, the parents, were, themselves, adolescents. She notes that this isn’t the proper way to go, as adolescents are neurologically and physiologically hard-wired to seek out new, and particularly gratifying experiences, as they are out to eventually make their own way in the world, as adults. Parents can thus best interact with adolescents by setting boundaries and letting adolescents take the consequences of their actions, rather than the parent being the one dealing with said consequences.

Teenagers need connection and guidance, Darby notes, and parents who can connect with their teenagers will find it easier for the latter to buy into what the parent is attempting to teach them. She emphasizes that teenagers will listen to their parents if they don’t think that the latter is judging them, pointing out that, if teenagers are given parameters to work within and are shown not only these but also the consequences of breaking those parameters, they are more likely to connect with their parents.

One of the myths surrounding teenagers is that they don’t care about anything but their friends, which, Darby notes, isn’t true, as they care about what other people think about them. She notes that humans, by nature, want to please others, and that adolescents focus on their peers because they are practicing creating relationships. Darby also remarks that it’s damaging to think of teenagers as always going against a parent, as that kind of relationship is inherently one of conflict, making that relationship emotional and reactive, particularly in the teenager’s mind, leading to the adolescent pulling away and shutting down.

Parents asking “How can I help you?” Darby notes, create a relationship with far more possibilities than one where the relationship is based on conflict. In addition, getting adolescents and teenagers a mentor, someone whom teenagers could go to if they have problems or need advice, who have an emotional or intellectual connection with the adolescent, can turn troubled teenagers into successful adults, Darby notes.

During adolescence, the brain constantly looks for new things that an adolescent can take on, Darby emphasizes. Where the brain is concerned, the adolescent’s brain develops at possibly the second fastest rate in any period of a human being’s life, with brain development while in utero being the period when the human brain develops the fastest. This is when the brain starts selecting those parts which are used often, and pushes aside those parts which aren’t so often used, resulting in a great deal of flux and growth. Creativity is high at this period in life, and adolescents are always looking for new things to do. Darby also notes that the adolescent’s brain releases melatonin two hours after the adult brain does, resulting in their falling asleep later and waking up later compared to adults. Using drugs or alcohol during this period thus also affects the brain adversely, during this period of growth. The neurotransmitters in the adolescent’s brain which seek out new experiences, Darby also emphasizes, are five times stronger than the brain’s own signals to stop and think, which means that teenagers will prioritize going right for what is the most fun or gratifying, and this also means that parents really connect with their teenagers when setting boundaries.

Where the challenges of raising teenagers today, compared to previous generations, is concerned, Darby notes that social media and the constant input of information (which isn’t necessarily checked) is difficult for adolescents to figure out. Social media, in the adolescent’s mind, creates an alluringly shiny world which is hard to manage, as adolescents feel isolated if they don’t feel they are part of that world. This is very damaging to an adolescent, as they are sensitive to negative comments, to the point of their brain registering this as pain. This, Darby notes, is something that everyone is presently figuring out, as the previous generations haven’t had to deal with social media and the Internet.

Rethinking Your Teenager espouses a philosophy different from the traditional approach, and Darby notes that this philosophy enables children to build a foundation of strength, resilience, self-sufficiency and empathy, making the resultant adults capable of handling themselves. She gives the example of what happened when the Covid-19 virus hit the world, noting that those who don’t have such foundations don’t know “where to go,” as they haven’t questioned who and what they are. This would be in contrast to those who have such foundations, who can figure out what else they can do, and Darby then related the instance of how differently parents and children react to rejection, such as not making the cut in a sports team, depending on what method they use. A traditional relationship will be one where the parent would try to talk to those concerned, such as the coach, while one using the philosophy espoused in the book would turn that into a learning opportunity, with one lesson being that the things that happen to a child aren’t necessarily personal. Darby notes that, at present, American parents aren’t good at letting their children fail, or at letting their adolescents deal with the consequences of their actions. Darby also points out that parents who control their adolescents and not give them a voice are sending the message to their children that the parents don’t trust their children, when this is likely not the case.

To parents, Darby advises that they ask their children for their opinion and to then listen to their responses.

Purchase from Amazon: 

Rethinking Your Teenager: Shifting from Control and Conflict to Structure and Nurture to Raise Accountable Young Adults by Darby Fox

Dr. Michael S Scheeringa on A Parent's Guide to PTSD in Youth

In this interview, Dr. Michael Scheeringa talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about his book, They’ll Never Be the Same: A Parent’s Guide to PTSD in Youth.



“Parents, it’s up to you.” ~Dr. Michael Scheeringa

As a young, newly-trained doctor, Michael was interested in preventing child abuse, but found that field to be too ambitious to tackle, so he went into research into the effect of trauma on children - post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in other words. He accumulated a lot of information from his research and clinical work had been spending time speaking about the matter to his colleagues as well as leading training workshops on the matter, but he felt that the word wasn’t going out as quickly as he felt it should. He thus wrote They’ll Never Be the Same in an attempt to let parents and the ordinary person know the symptoms and effects of PTSD on children.

Michael notes that PTSD springs from experiences which children consider to be life-threatening, rather than experiences which are stressful but don’t get up to the intensity of being life-threatening. The events are sudden, unexpected, sheer moments of panic, which can take place during such events as natural disasters, attacks by dogs (for young children), witnessing domestic violence and the like. That said, he agreed that not everybody reacts the same way to the same situation, due to the difference in the way children perceive things, with one child being in a car accident and getting traumatized and another child in the same accident not being traumatized, and he infers the possibility that this could be due to the way each individual’s brain is wired. Michael notes that, where the issue of being separated from parents is concerned, such an event isn’t necessarily life-threatening, although it is stressful, unless it’s done in a very frightening way.

Some of the myths that Michael points out about childhood PTSD are:

• “Young children don’t remember what happened to them.” This is not true. Children as young as three can suffer from PTSD, and they will remember the traumatic event as they grow older.
• “Kids grow out of it.” This doesn’t happen, so it is best to get help for the child as soon as possible - immediately, as much as possible, within a month at most.
• “The parent - particularly the mother - is to blame.” This isn’t the case, and Michael points out that parents - particularly mothers - were blamed for autism in the 1950s, as they were blamed for schizophrenia in the 1960s. Granted, some parents might be using their children to get doctors to doing something which might not be proper or legitimate, and Michael does admit that therapists and clinicians are exposed, during their training, to populations which skew towards such behavior, but he also says that, in his experience, parents don’t lie where their children’s welfare is concerned.

Michael remarks that parents can tell if a child suffers PTSD by seeing a sudden change in a child’s behavior. PTSD is the only psychological disorder which manifests itself immediately, so something like a child being happy and expressive one day and literally withdrawn the next day is a symptom of PTSD. He also notes that there are twenty different diagnostic indicators for PTSD, which fall into three types:

1. Re-experiencing - nightmares, thoughts that barge in.
2. Avoidance and numbing - losing interest in things they previously liked.
3. Increased arousal - difficulty sleeping and concentration, exaggerated startle responses (“jumpy”).

Therapies for PTSD will never enable the child to totally heal. The best that can be done is to enable the child to live with the event, similar to how people would live with diabetes or chronic back pain, for the rest of their life. That said, such therapies will enable those who are successfully treated to live out their live productively.

Michael remarks that psychotherapy is the first line of treatment for PTSD, as it has the best long-lasting effect. There are different types of psychotherapy for PTSD, and one of these, which Michael recommends and uses, is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This is a form of evidence-based treatment, which means that the therapy has been tested in randomized clinical trials and has been shown to work, unlike other therapies which have not been clinically tested at all. CBT consists of twelve to fifteen weekly sessions, with the patient learning new coping strategies at the start of the process, after which they need to start talking about their trauma in a gentle, guided way to enable them to gain mastery of the negative feelings they have about the event. Michael notes that up to 75% of his patients have had success with CBT, and the other 25% need help in addition to CBT, such as through medication.

Michael estimates that 90% of all children with PTSD aren’t so diagnosed, as most clinicians nowadays aren’t trained to recognize PTSD in children. For the moment, it is now up to the parents to seek help for their children by finding their own assessments, such as those on Michael’s website, and then looking around for therapists who can help them out. Some of the questions Michael recommends parents to ask, to find the right kind of therapist, are:

• Do you use evidence-based therapy?
• Have you seen a child like mine, with PTSD, before?
• How many cases have you treated?
• Have you treated children who are my child’s age?
• What kind of psychotherapy do you plan to use?

He also says that parents should switch therapists if the therapist they are working with doesn’t seem to be effective.

On the subject of studies conducted on brains of people who suffered PTSD, Michael remarks that the present conventional wisdom is that those peoples’ brains have suffered changes due to PTSD but notes that most of this wisdom is based on studies which didn’t have a reference image of the brain prior to PTSD and those images after the event which triggered PTSD took place. He notes that some newer studies, which do use “before and after” imaging, indicate that the brain structure didn’t change before and after the event took place, and that it is likely that some people are more vulnerable to PTSD than others because of the way their brain is structured.

Purchase from Amazon: They’ll Never Be the Same: A Parent’s Guide to PTSD in Youth by Dr. Michael Scheeringa

Eliza Factor on Caring for a Child with Periventricular Leukomalacia (PVL)

In this interview, Eliza Factor talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com about her book, Strange Beauty: A Portrait of My Son.


“We work better by working with other people and helping other people.” ~Eliza Factor

Although Eliza didn’t have a typical middle class life until she settled down with her husband, she describes herself as a “typical person” leading a normal life before her son, Felix, entered her life. She contracted chickenpox while she was pregnant with Felix, and this impacted Felix. He was born early and his being “floppy” after he was born was initially racked up to his being a premature baby. Eliza and her husband then began going to doctors and getting Felix tested before he was finally diagnosed with having periventricular leukomalacia, which is essentially when the brain’s white matter is damaged during fetal development. This has led to Felix’s combination of cerebral palsy and autism as the two major conditions which he has to this day.

At the time that he was diagnosed, at the age of one, nobody could tell Eliza if Felix would even walk or talk, and it was then that Eliza realized that her son wouldn’t grow up the way other children did. Eliza notes that diagnoses are the labels presently used today to access the services one needs, as even a diagnosis like “autism” is a basket terms to describe various conditions. She remarks that Felix’s conditions mean that he can’t do things for himself, although he can do such things as standing up, if he is helped. Eliza also notes that, despite the violent behavior that Felix exhibited, and despite having some limitations with communicating, such as describing things in the past tense, he is very communicative, with an ability to strongly connect with others and share with them an “infectious” sense of humor. Despite this, Felix apparently has a far more tenuous connection with his body than others, with Eliza hazarding that Felix can most likely feel pain but doesn’t know where exactly it comes from.

Felix lived at home until the age of ten, and Eliza describes life with him as “rich, full and exhausting,” as it was also during that time when Felix displayed cyclical, violent behavior, during which times he would hit himself for periods of up to three days straight. She wrote Strange Beauty after placing Felix in a residential school, where he could live in an environment where his needs could be met, and with her home now feeling empty, she had the time to reflect on her experiences with Felix. Eliza attempts to explain the process of her journey within its pages, to the point of embracing and accepting the disabilities within Felix and recognizing the disabilities in herself and in others, which was liberating for her. She also wants to use the book as a way to open up conversations about what it’s like to live with a disabled child, particularly those who can become as violent as Felix could, and points out that what is needed is more specialized education programs in public schools as well as training amongst public servants on how violence can escalate and how to de-escalate it.

Eliza also learned how to read other people’s body language after years of observing Felix. She also realized that she needed help from others, not only when dealing with Felix’s outbursts but also with other aspects of her life. She notes that public support for parents and families with children who have conditions similar to Felix’s is lacking at present. Eliza remarks that there are people who may look and act normal but who have conditions similar to Felix’s (which cause outbursts of violence and behavior) who are punished, rather than helped.

Eliza notes that there were people out in the street who would walk up to her and Felix and interact with them, with some offering to help and most just saying “hi,” which were positive experiences for her. She started a community center for families with children who had disabilities, an art and play center which runs on a volunteer basis (and which is intended to be an indoor place which was open to everyone), as well as to use disability as a way to bring people together. Eliza notes that meeting within the confines of the community center, is energizing and fun for members of families whose common thread is having a disabled child, as it brings out the best in her as well as with everyone else involved.

Eliza also notes that Felix’s younger sisters had a good relationship with him when they were younger, but were jealous of such things as needing to be able to put on their clothes by themselves while Felix was given help. Their view of disability is different from most people, which is highlighted by the story that Eliza gave - about telling her daughter about a game she played as a child, when she and other kids would ask each other about what disability they would rather have. Eliza’s daughter was confused by the story, as her daughter had never considered blindness or deafness as being a disability.

To those who would find themselves in a position similar to Eliza’s, her advice is to love the child as they are, to seek help when needed, and to follow the child’s lead, as the child will give clues to how they want to be handled, as such children shouldn’t be forced to be something they aren’t. She also believes that all of us are disabled in some way, and that there is a lot of fear about this, but that that is the way humans are and that is okay, which opens up freedom for oneself and others.

Purchase from Amazon: Strange Beauty: A Portrait of My Son by Eliza Factor

Kate Lund on Helping Your Child Build Resilience and Thrive in School, Sports, and Life

Kate Lund talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com about her book, Bounce: Help Your Child Build Resilience and Thrive in School, Sports and Life.


PLAY THE VIDEO AND LEARN MORE FROM DR. KATE LUND.

“Focus on the relationship with the child.” ~Kate Lund

Kate is a mother, clinical psychologist and university instructor who is interested in resiliency and wrote Bounce from the perspective as a mother and university instructor, and based on her own childhood experiences with hydrocephalus. Kate noted that resiliency is particularly important where children today are concerned, as they face a lot of challenges. The book came out of her years of experience as a clinical psychologist and with her own curiosity about resiliency and is designed to be an easy read for parents, teachers and coaches. One of the times that she recalls was when she was working in Shriners Burn Hospital in Boston, where she encountered children who had serious burn injuries, children who needed a great deal of resilience in their lives after receiving their injuries.

Kate notes that resiliency is important mainly because children will face challenges, and the ability to get up after being knocked down by a challenge enables them to move on and eventually realize their potential, rather than getting stuck. She also remarks that resiliency varies from child to child, with some being naturally more resilient than others, and notes that it is important to help less resilient children shift their perspective to one which enables greater resiliency.

Kate remarks that children can become more resilient as they learn and grow, where the environment and the people around them can help out. She points out that helping a child manage their emotions and, thus, their frustrations, which will keep those children from shutting down. Kate remarks that kids learn in different ways and at a different pace, and that separating their classroom performance from how they feel about themselves enables greater resiliency in children.

The pillars of resilience that Kate notes in the book are

· the ability to tolerate frustration and manage emotions;
· navigate friendships and social pressures;
· sustain focus and attention;
· develop courage;
· build motivation;
· find confidence; and
· create optimism.

Kate believes that building the skills espoused by these pillar will create more resilient children. She notes that the model she uses is based on her experience and analysis, as well as on the research done on resilience, and that these pillars are the core elements of resilience. She gave an example of a situation where navigating friendship and social pressure was the concern, remarking that, by helping a child do so, they can be taught skills which would enhance their confidence and emotional intelligence, what their own strengths and values are and accept and understand individual differences in others.

Kate notes that, at the end of each chapter, are bullet points – action steps – that parents and teachers can do to help foster resilience in children. Teachers and parents, for example, can help by creating a positive, focused state of mind and identifying the way by which a child learns, as different children learn in different ways. Parents also need to be connected with their child’s strengths, passions and aptitudes, and then focus on these in daily life.

Purchase from Amazon: Bounce: Help Your Child Build Resilience and Thrive in School, Sports and Life by Kate Lund

Jennifer Reich on Why Parents Reject Vaccines

Jennifer Reich talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com about her latest book, Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines.



“In the end, parents see themselves as primarily responsible for their own children.” ~Jennifer Reich

Jennifer is a sociologist by training whose research, for the past twenty years, centers on how parents care for their families under the initial assumption that all parents do what they believe is right for their children. Her book, Calling the Shots was ten years in the making and focuses on the question of parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated over concerns over vaccine safety. Jennifer has spoken to parents on the decisions they make, to pediatricians about the care they provide, lawyers representing families who may have been harmed by vaccines and vaccine researchers, just to name a few, to get as many viewpoints as she could on the question of vaccinating children.

Jennifer’s first book was an exploration of the child welfare system, wherein she researched on legal issues about parenting, and it was while she was mulling over which topic to focus on that George W. Bush announced vaccinating people against smallpox as a counterterrorism measure. At the same time, there was an uprise in the issue of parents not wanting their children vaccinated, and Jennifer then latched onto these issues. She feels that the book is part of a conversation about the subject, one that opens up a dialogue by avoiding the polarizing tone that previous books on the subject have taken by being respectful of the various viewpoints around the issue.

Jennifer notes that vaccination allows parents to think about the legal aspects of parenting, as in the United States vaccination has been enforced through the school system since the 1960s, as the belief is that putting together several children in a schoolhouse increases the risk of infection, and vaccination is necessary for parents to access educational resources. That said, states allow for parents to opt out of vaccination for particular reasons, such as religious beliefs, and it is the latter that a lot of parents resort to in order to keep their children from being vaccinated.

Vaccination was around even before Edward Jenner conducted his ground breaking vaccination work, but the method back then was to use living smallpox viruses in an attempt to avoid smallpox infection, which sometimes caused the person so vaccinated to be hit by the disease itself. Edward Jenner, however, was the first person to use a non-infectious agent (the cowpox virus) to vaccinate against smallpox, and even then, the conversation around the pros and cons of vaccination was present. Jennifer points out that a threshold percentage of the population - eighty to ninety percent - need to be immunized to keep an infectious disease at bay, and that not everyone can be vaccinated, due to such reasons as personal physiology.

Jennifer points out that the concerns around vaccination stem from the present context of individual parenting, wherein the parent is responsible for everything about their children, and health is related to individual responsibility, and thus individual parenting. She points out that bad luck plays a role in one’s life, which is something that parents who attempt to control everything they could - a possible byproduct of the context of individual parenting - don’t fully understand, and that the reason that a lot of parents who choose not to vaccinate their children come from higher income families is because these parents can devote more time to their children’s concerns, rather than with making a living

The issue of whether or not to vaccinate thus stems from a larger issue about parenting, and Jennifer points out that public health isn’t personalized to individuals, whereas concerns about health vary from individual to individual, which is why some parents regard the public health system may not apply to their individual children. She also points out that, while the short-term concerns about possible adverse effects from vaccines have been debunked and that longer-term adverse effects are hard to relate, given the length of time between the time of vaccination and when these supposed effects do show up, Jennifer believes that better information should be given to parents to enable them to get a clearer picture of how useful vaccinations are, particularly since the issue is a contentious one amongst families, with the older generation, who lived through polio, finding it difficult to believe that the younger generation of parents don’t want their children vaccinated.

Jennifer believes that the conversation about vaccination now needs to be done in a context of lack of blame and disbelief and contentiousness, and also believes that parents who do have concerns should ask questions to clarify their issues.

Jennifer Reich’s website for her book, Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines, is amazon.com.

Purchase from Amazon: Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines by Jennifer Reich