Dr Tara Porter on Parenting

0:04Hello and welcome to a special episode of The Midpoint where I get an expert's take on something that's important to us in midlife. This week we're focusing on parenting and how we can help safeguard children's mental health. Parenting is always a tricky subject to tackle. Everyone has a different opinion on how you should be doing it and I think most of us feel we're probably doing a worse job than we actually are because we're influenced by other people's ideas of what makes a perfect parent or a perfect child. Is there such a thing in either case? Or when you throw in the demands of day-to-day life it's easy to feel completely overwhelmed.

0:40Also recently there has been so much talk about the Netflix series Adolescence and it's really laid bare the gulf between the world in which we grew up in and the world the young people in our lives are navigating and it's opened up conversations I think we desperately need to have with our children and with each other so I thought maybe this is the right time to chat to an expert about this. clinical psychologist dr tara porter has worked in the nhs for over 25 years and also led a psychology team within the child and adolescent mental health services she has seen firsthand the increase in children being referred to mental health services and she joins me not long after the release of her new book good enough a framework for modern parenting a book she hopes will help both adults and children break free from the pressure of perfect parenting we're going to go through the book and Tara is here to answer a few of your questions as well.

1:37And throughout our chat, inevitably, my own experiences came into play. And inevitably, when I read the book and discuss things with her, you can't help going back over your own parenting and wondering where you did things right and where you did things wrong. And I think what we need to do is just kind of take off that cloak of an idea that we have to be absolutely perfect. I hope That's what you take away from all of this. So without further ado, here's Dr. Tara Porter.

2:09Dr. Tara Porter, welcome to The Midpoint. I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me. I put a shout out for questions for you today, having read your book and got quite a few back, and we'll get into those and my own. But I want to know what led you to write this book in particular. I think what led me to write this book in particular was that I've spent a long time as a therapist and a psychologist in the NHS listening to young people. And when I listen to them, whatever their diagnosis, whether they are diagnosed with ADHD or anorexia or depression or anxiety, is underneath it all a feeling of not being enough, of not being good enough.

2:45So sometimes that's not popular enough or thin enough or clever enough, but the sense of not being enough. And I was interested in that. And I was also interested because what I see in society, in clinic, but also just in my own home life, is that as parents, we're knocking ourselves out to give them more and more opportunities. And over the last generation, I think that's really been the zeitgeist of the time. And so there's a disparity there, isn't there, that the parents are trying to give so much and the kids are feeling like it's too much. And I think I was really interested in the sort of tipping point where the opportunities we give to kids turn into expectations in their minds or standards that they have to live up to.

3:26And sometimes I would see that played out in my clinic where, you know, a new family would come in and the parents, it'd all be lovely. And the parents would sort of be poleaxed really by suddenly discovering that their young person, their precious child was mentally unwell. and they would sort of you know kind of say we didn't see this coming um she's she's always been such a good girl she's always done so well in school she's fantastic at swimming or football or whatever it is and she's so she's got so many friends and I look at the young person and they seem to be sort of wincing and sort of sinking a little bit like they had that all those things rather than being a source of self-esteem it become a yoke of expectations around their neck and so I felt like that you know this book was really timely I wrote a book to young people a few years ago and after that people asked you've captured something about why young people you know what's young people are feeling but what can we do is it about it as parents and it was that disparity that I wanted to explore in this book the sort of disparity between the opportunities and the expectations.

4:35Yeah there's so much to unpick there in my head I was kind of supplementary questions were bouncing in all the time you know the first one that came at the very beginning was is this a problem particularly of being a wealthier society you know because when you talk about opportunities people have this idea that almost your success is predicated on the fact you have to be more successful than your parents you know we're always told these kind of metrics aren't we it doesn't matter what income you're on almost does it because there's this idea that your kids are going to do better I think that's right and I'm you know I'm not a sociologist but I'm really interested in the sociology of distress, really, because I think we're sort of keen in a way to see, you know, sometimes young people get kind of called things like snowflakes or something in society, don't they?

5:20We almost want to position, we know that lots of young people are struggling, but it's really hard to think about what we might have done as a society, you know, with our best intentions in giving kids opportunities. We all want our kids to have more than we had. but I just wonder as a you know as a I don't think it's a function of of having individual wealth but I do wonder if it is a function yes of a little bit of having a wealthier society because I think there is we all want our kids to have more but whether there's a tipping point and there's something about the last generation the economic changes the prices of houses the change in women working and and one of the key things I think is the number of young people who go to university you know and and everyone kind of want to be aspiring to that so you know if you're a graduate parent you probably expect your child to go to university really you know I mean I know apprenticeships are getting there more popular but I think this is an expectation but if you just missed going to university in your generation you probably want it for your child you probably aspire for that and there's only you know there's only so much isn't there so I think there are only so many graduate jobs that you know are are almost worth that sacrifice and the expense of going if that is what you're looking for at the end of it yeah and what what you think that's going to give you in life.

6:34Indeed, indeed. You know, when you see the young people coming out with these enormous debts, you know, that they have for university, which is obviously a different thing than it was in perhaps our generation, Gabby. So yeah, so there's a sort of sociology of distress. I think that's kind of what I'm trying to explore in the book, rather than thinking about it all being sort of positioned as a sort of young person, a fault or a weakness in the young person. Yeah. Yeah. And you admit in the very beginning of the book, you kind of say, look, as a clinical psychologist, you know, there were times where I was very disappointed with myself and I wasn't proud of how I reacted to things that my kids did.

7:12And I think that's the thing we should set out at the beginning of this. And I've tried to say in the introduction as well, it's such a terribly hard area, isn't it, to say, oh, well, you're right and you're wrong. And parenting gets very toxic in terms of conversation, doesn't it? And people love to have those. well they shouldn't have done that and then he wouldn't have done this and maybe if they'd done this for them and everybody's got their ideas let's say about what works so I guess everything we talk about here is just something that people can try and they might have their own ideas of what works have you found dealing with parents has changed over the last 10-15 years and what they see for their children perhaps not as much as you would think in fact because I guess when I pick up parents, they're really a terribly vulnerable point, you know, when I meet them.

8:02And, and so, you know, I really try not to take a blaming parents stance, you know, I come at it from a point where I think everyone's trying to do their best. And, you know, I don't believe in a perfect parent. And that's partly what the book's about as well. And if it did exist, I'm certainly not it. So I'm trying to, you know, like when you see the parents and they're really struggling, you know, just try and meet them with the empathy from that position that they've, they've tried to do their best. And this is a really complex problem. I mean, you'll be aware at the end of the book, I talk about, you know, mental health conditions often being a kind of perfect storm of factors all interacting, and it's not kind of one thing to blame.

8:49So yeah, Yeah, I think, you know, parents when I meet them are often really thoughtful about what's happened and what they've contributed and what they can do now and how they can make it better, you know. So perhaps not as much as you would think. Yeah, I suppose by the time they reach you, there's been a lot of water under the bridge, hasn't there? Things have obviously gone in a direction that they really want to try and reverse or bring the health back to their child.

9:23I hope you're enjoying this episode of The Midpoint. If you are, it would be amazing if you could give us a review and subscribe. It really helps. I'll be back in a moment.

9:36Let's do a few of the questions that have come in. And you talk about friendships quite a lot in the book, actually, and this question pertains to that. Susie has said, I have a single child and I'm wondering how best to support them and ensure they have a good network of friends. And that also, I think, got me thinking about situations where people almost wonder when the point is they can call their child their friend as well. We'll get into that because I think if you're a single parent and it's just the two of you, that's a very kind of close and brilliant relationship can obviously make both people flourish.

10:09But it can also be quite hard on a child to be that one person, can't it? yeah I think that is the struggle about being a single parent and single children often get kind of pillared as kind of spoiled and I don't think that's the problem I think the the problem might be that parents have just got to kind of hold back from giving too much and because when we think about the relationship between a parent and a child we're thinking about attachment and we're thinking about the relate that relationship being kind of like the blueprint for all the other relationships that follow and so as a parent especially if you've got one only one child you may want to make it all okay for them and that isn't a great blueprint for future friendship relationships so in the book in the childhood section of the book I talk about about how you can use your relationship with them to sort of springboard them into their friendship relationships and trying to think, because obviously what we need for friendship relationships is a capacity to take somebody else's point of view, you know, an ability to hold our own and a capacity to take other people's point of view.

11:22And I think that would be the really important issue that this parent is facing. You talk about when a child is going off to school. I can't remember the exact phrase you used, but that is the kind of almost your last chance of having complete influence on them isn't it because once they go into a school environment or I suppose a nursery where they're going all day and they're four years old or so that point they start to be influenced by those children around them and and those friendships can be so powerful even from a really early age in terms of the influence they exert on your child. Yes you see it's not just that they are entering school and that's why that's happening I mean school is generally timed because that's when children start to look around to their peers much more at sort of five than at three and then more at seven than at five you know and that goes on until the teenage years so you know as parents we have to be aware that their friendships that they're making now they're going to be part of a peer group they're going to be part of a generation aren't they that the things that the commonality of experience that they have Exactly.

12:32So it's really important that their peer relationships, I think we can tend to think it was just friendship, but it's and friends come and go. And of course, these friends will come and go. But there is a commonality of experience that will pass with them through through life. Yeah. And so the good network of friends that Susie talks about, because I think we've all been there, haven't we, where at various stages you think the people that your kids have decided to gravitate towards might not be exerting the best influence. And you can go through all the ages, can't you, on that? I'm sure my kids were in the same boat the other way around.

13:07I'm sure there were people thinking, God, I wish they weren't friends with them. But how do you let your child know that without them feeling that they've had their decision making and their own autonomy curtailed? One thing we know about teenagers is if you tell them they can't do something, they really push back and show that they can or they want to do it even more. I think there we'll have to show up with kind of empathy and curiosity. And I think you pick up something really important, Gabby, about not over intervening. intervening so you know you're I sometimes talk to parents that empathy and curiosity like your first aid kit for friendship you know so when your child comes back from school do we know what age this child is or no we don't and we don't know whether it's a girl or boy do we because it's different patterns slightly different patterns let's do both girl and boy well when they come home from school the girls tend to talk about it more I mean this is a overgeneralization but some truth in it and I think that can really evoke something really powerful you know in us mothers particularly and I think one of the things that it brings up is that girls friendships tend to be very complicated and there's lots of kind of subtle power games that go on in in girls friendships so when we look at the research there's something called popular and there's something called liked.

14:35So they go into schools and they ask the teenagers, you know, who is popular in your class? And they get a list of three to five names or whatever. And then they go and who is liked in your class? And they get another list. And what we find is we imagine that's a Venn diagram. The ideas about who's popular and who's liked are quite different. And so popularity in a school setting, particularly in teenage years, is more akin to social power. and what is powerful in a school is different in different schools but it's often that kind of elusive idea of coolness but in girls it can sometimes be bitchiness it can be the girl who's got the power is the girl who can make the most cutting comment can i just give you an example of this was that sprung to mind my daughter was trying out a school that she thought she wanted to go to for the day and she said to think one of the girls that she was she was kind of put with she was about 11 at the time she said um so who are the girls that i should avoid who are the tricky girls and this girl looked at her and she went my group when she told me that I thought that self-awareness at 11 12 years old that you were the group that caused the problems was quite remarkable actually but there there is that kind of um attraction for some reason magnetic yeah I was very impressed that your daughter said who am I who am I going to avoid because girls feel like moths to the flames often to the the tricky girls so the reason was I have say she'd experienced some bullying when she was a little bit younger and I think it really her antennae were really up her radar for a few years were really up when when that happens I think it does make you because she had been that child that was attracted to the group that seemed to be you know the sassy group and with it came all kinds of issues and problems you know that as a parent you know I had no idea until she kind of came home and you know told me what was going on obviously which is also devastating isn't it any parent who's had a child in those situations because you think everything's fine and you know and obviously what you want is your child to share as much as soon as they possibly can I guess so that you can advise them without necessarily jumping in and this is the thing you talk about and we were just getting on to then when you when do you intervene in those situations not just bullying but in terms of friendships that you think might be having a bad impact or something a negative impact on your child okay I'm going to sort of pick that a little bit yeah sorry I know but I think because you know we want them to share and when you think when we think about what stops them sharing from some research from my experience often what stops them sharing is us intervening that they fear that we're going to run into the school and make a fuss because it does bring out a passion in us you know you're talking about something that happened a few years ago and I can see it's if you still feel it don't you how dare that yeah you mean to my little girl you know and you can and when they come home from school and if they tell you you can get you know up in arms about it and partly sometimes kids want that they want you to go in and and sort it out but I think it's it's a really difficult one and the word advise is you know is is a tricky one too because I would say that one thing nobody has ever said to me in therapy no young person no no adult is gee I wish my mum had given me more advice it's like so we have to use advice really sparingly you know it's just so what we want to do is you know you hold that feeling i know it's so annoying isn't it it's so annoying because that's what we want to do we're adults we think we've got the answers but like going back to what i said earlier they're in a different generation they are a different cohort you know they have always they love to tell you but even when they're like this in your day but they're right when they say it wasn't like this in your day they are they're right and so what you've got to do is say gosh this hurts this feel I feel bad for my kid I want to run in and intervene straight away and of course if it's a chronic bullying problem you do and sometimes you have to change schools and sometimes you have to get involved but a lot of childhood friendship issues are kind of you know it changes on a daily basis and you go and rush in on a Monday to complain and by Tuesday they're best friends again you know and you're looking a bit a bit silly as a parent so you've got to hold back on that feeling until you know it's really a chronic problem and and just use that empathy that kind of and trying to understand it from their point of view trying to the curiosity gets you to the empathy so just asking the questions you know what happened how did you feel what do you think's going on there what are your ideas about changing this trying to hold back a little bit and you know you can sprinkle a bit of knowledge because so one of the things that I think is really useful especially in girls friendships to sprinkle is the idea of an on-off friend so most women I find know what an on-off friend is straight away they've you know they've experienced that so that's that friend where a little girl goes into the playground one day and the girl links arms with her and whispers all the secrets to her and then they go home and they're all buoyed up oh so says my friend and then the next day that so-called friend is doing it with somebody else and your child gets stuck in kind of competing for that friendship and so you know when you're offering the kind of empathy and the curiosity and you're holding back from kind of demonizing that other child you might want to say oh I wonder if they're an on off end you know I had one of those once and then and spark their image oh what's an on off end and try and say well an on off end is somebody who isn't consistent and does this one day and something else the next day so you're trying to get them to sort of evoke really their problem solving problems a little bit you know yeah Sarah asks and it's a good time of year to ask this question how do you support teenagers through exam stress yeah it's a million dollar question isn't it you know again I'm going to answer it in kind of two ways because the first way I'm going to answer it is I think that generally as a society I think this is one of the kind of when we're talking about the sort of sociology of distress we're putting under kids under test and exam stress for years and years and years starting in year six probably with the the sats that they sit in primary school and so I think part of the way you support kids with exam stress is make sure that they're not chronically stressed for their whole school career you know a lot of schools should just be about learning stuff having some fun getting on with your friends doing enough work to get by and I think that's really important you know part of childhood because I think when I think about the kind of perfect storm which is contributed towards mental health conditions I would say that education is a big part of that and you know go through why that is in my book and yet they get to their GCSEs and their A-levels, which I say would be the important ones, and they do actually have to knuckle down for six months or so to get through those exams.

21:34And I think that parents, there's a sort of narrative in society that we prepare kids for exams by getting them into habits of work, you know, in year seven or year eight. You know, I got that from one of my own children's parents even when I went in at year seven and they said, oh yeah, I think he'll be okay for his GCSEs in five years time you know it's just too much you know but then at six months you you know sort of the January perhaps before their exams if they're not working hard and if you have to kind of say look this is this the big deal and I have tried not to be too stressed about this all the way through your school career but now you do need to knuckle down and and do some work and and what's that going to look like and how are you going to organize it and and what can I do to support you and what do you need to give up what's the loss about this over the next next few months so often I have that conversation with young people where they're procrastinating about starting their exams and often what they feel is that they're having to give up any because they're under so much pressure and they've got so much on they're having to give up any of their free time you know and often stay up too late because they they just want to get that bit of time for themselves but I think you just have to be really explicit with kids about that this is the time and unfortunately the system we're in means that they have to get whatever it is the six GCSEs at grade six to get into sixth form maybe or they have to get these grades to get into their A-levels and be really you know I think it's it's not about being sort of panic laden I mean the lots of kids I think it's about 20 percent don't get their grades at A-levels to get into the university, the first choice university.

23:15And that is also okay. They end up going to different universities and they end up making friends and they have a good time. And in retrospect, they can't imagine it being any different. But, you know, putting that on them a little bit in sort of this, about this time of year, a bit earlier even, and saying, yeah, okay, well, you know, I know you want to go to Birmingham and Birmingham looks like a great university, but your second option is also a really good option and other kids get through some clearing and it's just about how much work you want to do and how much you want to give to this and and I will be here to support you and see how it works out yeah.

23:50So just it's kind of a gentle nudge perhaps in the in the months beforehand in terms of the framework to use a popular word in our conversation the framework to to build up towards those exams and then obviously I think when you get through GCSEs personally I kind of said right it's A-levels are kind of on you in the sense of you know you're now in a much more sophisticated style of learning supposedly with a levels and you're preparing yourself to either go into the world of work or you're going to university and it's hard get taking your kind of foot off the you know the accelerator in terms of your parenting style at that point isn't it and because obviously when they're little and they're doing homework you know you want to make sure that they've got somewhere to work or they've got quiet if they need it and all those things if they've got homework and you want to check they've got homework and often schools make you sign to say that they have done their homework but homework itself is such a source of stress isn't it for some kids and and at a time when they should be you know I had got twins and very different attitudes to to homework and it's so hard to you know to say to a 12 year old okay well don't do it then because if you can see it's causing a lot of stress that's the natural thing you'd want to do as a parent so I think parents often feel quite conflicted then don't you am i letting them down by not saying come on we really need to do this or am i letting them down by saying we have to sit here until you've done this i think in both the in terms of the what you said about a levels and also in terms of the homework i think what i've tried to do my book and as you you've said it goes through from babies right up 18 plus and i think why i did that is because i think what i'm trying to do is think about what where you're trying to get to and where you're trying to get to is you know sometimes I see kids who are at university and who are still having tutoring or young adults who've started to work and they don't feel confident in their work and they're getting their parents to check it over you know even into their 20s and I think that that kind and you know and where does that start that kind of starts you know at 12 which isn't to say that you don't give your kid any help with their homework at 12 but you've just got to keep your eye on that ball you know where you're trying to get them to is a sense of their own autonomy and a sense of their own competence which are two of the key things which seem to be linked to feeling good about yourself as an adult having a sense of autonomy in your own life and having a sense of competence in your own work and I think what we the you know the education system but so much pressure on kids these days and parents that you can end up as a parent you know really giving too much help giving too much tutoring all through those years in secondary school and then the child hasn't got that sense of competence they haven't got the sense that they're doing it by themselves and of course this is a balance this is a you know my approach is a balanced way so it's not about saying oh don't give them any tutoring or help you know some kids definitely need help to get over the English or Maths GCSE you need English maths GCSE to basically do anything almost any job in in the UK and so you might need to give them a bit of help to get over that hurdle but it's about if you give them that constant intervention all the way through it's you who's more doing the homework or stretching the homework and they've got to get to the point where they're independent and have a sense of their own competence and the sense of their own autonomy and of course what we're seeing then is kids getting into courses or getting your jobs where this is slightly above their their natural level it's at their level if they've got a whole support team behind them and that's not what we want because that's a stressed position you know that's a real position of stress well that causes a lot of that will cause a lot of conflict in the workplace as well if if everybody feels they're carrying that person because they don't actually know how to get on with their job so you you can start these i mean this is quite mind-blowing you can start those problems at 12 you know those issues you know I think it's just about you know as parents keeping our eye and I think we get you know this is why I've written the book really because you know because I think we've gone slightly you know the book's called good enough and it's about where's the enough point you know and I think in our striving for sort of a better more for our kids we've kind of sometimes missed that enough point and I think that's impacted on their mental health and and I guess I don't just think that I've quoted lots of research I've seen it and I've quoted you know there's lots of research kind of showing that and it's really difficult because I'm trying to explain that to parents it's it's so nuanced you know it's it's not a sort of black and white thing it's so easy much easier to hold on and say oh no you shouldn't ever give your kids tutoring or you shouldn't ever help with your homework or yes you should always help you should always do it but I'm trying to find is what I call the messy middle you know what's the point where you give them some help but you don't want to give them so much help that they're not doing it themselves and you don't want to give them help every day.

28:45Then if you're giving them help every day, perhaps they need to get used to getting a lower grade and that's OK. Yeah. And see how they feel about getting that lower grade. And that's where you can have the conversations, can't you, about what it might take to move up to the next grade. You might have to do a little bit more work. Were your kids, Gabby, do you mind me asking? Maybe you don't want to share it. But, you know, were your kids the sex role stereotype, the girl taking on the homework very seriously and the boy not so keen? Although it's interesting. Absolutely. He didn't really want to do homework.

29:18He would apparently, according to, I sat next to one of his friends recently at a dinner and hadn't spoken about Ruben to him for their whole lives, basically. And he said, I remember when Ruben decided he wanted to get through an exam, he just knuckled down and got on it with work. And I never saw that at home. You know, it was kind of it was obviously being done at school, maybe. And he just decided to focus in class. But he did have a bit of processing issues and sensory issues in terms of the way he retained information. And whereas Lois was a bit more textbook, you know, the way she learned.

29:50And so that was quite hard as, you know, to have two people with very different to realise that one of them isn't being lazy, you know, and one of them isn't. It just was very tiring for him to to take on board that information because he had a little bit of dyslexia. He was dying with low level dyslexia. And so, you know, as a parent, you're having to kind of remember that all the time. It applies to anybody who's got more than one child, I guess. You know, it doesn't matter if they're twins or not. You can't parent the same way. I mean, I guess what I also see is a lot of risks. And I don't know if your daughter was like this, but from the good girl mentality of always doing your homework and always having to get it in and always having to be perfect.

30:27And often that kind of presentation that we see more in girls is a problem when it comes to sitting exams. And the boys are quite, the boys more like your son, will just sort of knuckle down and do it to get over that one hurdle and not worry about it being perfect and just seeing it, accepting more that has to be good enough. So, and I see, you know, there's risks and advantages. And that is a gender stereotype that is true. Yeah. For you as a clinician, you see that with girls and boys, that difference. Yeah, I mean, sometimes you get it the other way around, you know, it's not it's not 100 percent, but, you know, you do get more girls showing up in kind of eating disorder services, which are linked to a lot of perfectionism and trying to get everything right and trying to fit in and all those sorts of ideas.

31:13And the boys, you know, we see boys sadly showing up more in, you know, youth offending teams and, you know, showing up in places, you know, disenfranchised with school. You know, girls do better now at GCSE. So all that sort of thing. More girls are going to university. So, yeah. On gender, I mentioned adolescence in your introduction today, the Netflix drama, which obviously has created quite a lot of conversation when it came out, not just with parents and with, you know, kind of it became a societal kind of buzzword almost. And the prime minister mentioned it in parliament and has had conversations with, you know, kind of what he saw as potentially role models that could could help to, I was going to say, solve the problem.

31:57What is the problem in adolescence? I mean, I'm saying solve the problem. Adolescence, I think, kind of gave people all kinds of questions. One of them pertains to the episode about the school, actually, which was, I think, one of the most distressing because the image of the school in the series was of somewhere that was like a holding pen almost. And because of behavioural issues, kids were not getting taught, actually. It was more about crowd control and things. These were teenagers, obviously, if you haven't seen the series. And obviously the whole story is around the use of, well, the phone, I guess, becoming a weapon almost in itself in terms of what it can do to a teenage brain.

32:35So there's a lot to unpick from adolescence, but I wonder how much it's created conversations that you weren't having in your industry or if it's stuff that you've all been talking about for a long time or you've seen the impact and ramifications of for a while. yeah I suppose what really interested me about that was the the use of the phone and and I guess in my book I have three principles of parenting which is about having a good enough attitude being relationship based and being firm and kind and I guess the phone thing really links to the third principle about being firm and kind and and how we've parented with phones and screens and what is the right thing to do in the future and I I really don't claim to have all the answers about that because I think we're in a period where we don't really know and we need to sort of explore it but I guess what interested me about that was that the kids have this sort of secret life on the phone so there's questions about when we should give kids phones but that's a different issue but once you've given them a phone or you know do you sorry to interrupt you but do you have any hard and fast rules on that in terms of your own life you know what did what did you think the age for a phone was I think I probably was aware of what was going on on phones and screens and gaming probably earlier than most people.

33:51So I was probably a little bit stricter. You know, I talk in the book a little bit about my son, who is now a software engineer. So he's very into IT and the grey hairs. You should give him a credit because he actually is the reason we're able to talk now without the interruption of a clicking noise that was on your microphone. He came in and fixed it in about two seconds. Is he available for every episode of The Midfield? there's pros and cons of having somebody who's very good at it so I talk a little bit about you know what I learned from that experience and I think so there's two things there's when we give them a phone and there's the issues the adolescence brings up and I guess let's start with the issues of the adolescence brings up because that kind of feeds back to when we give them a phone because I think the issues that the adolescence program brought for me was this kind of secret life that teenagers have once they have it and because it's become like a lifeline you know that it's something it's almost become like a third hand doesn't it you know they have their phone in their hands the whole time and that's like they're having a relationship with this this object you know so they don't want to lose it and so what I see a lot in my clinic not in so much in terms of incel culture I think that's you know I haven't got a lot of experience in that but I have seen a lot of kids who bad things are happening on the phone via the phone and they're not telling their parents and they're not telling their parents because their parents will say well the problem is the phone and we're taking the phone away and because they don't want to have their phone taken away they don't tell their parents and so on adolescence what we saw is the girl the girl had her nudes shared and we didn't really they didn't really go into this but presumably she didn't tell her parents or she didn't tell the school at which point something different might have been able to happen and the boy didn't tell his parents that he was being bullied on the phone and so there were all those points for intervention where parents actually could make difference were lost because and this is what I call in my book sledgehammer firm kids fear that parents will come down sledgehammer firm on the phone and just take it away and they so can't bear that that they don't come and tell their parents that something terrible is happening to them and I've seen so many situations in all different kinds of situation types of situations sometimes involving you know porn or sexual assault or that sort of things but all bullying all sorts of different situations which have spiraled up because nobody said oh mom dad I've got this really difficult thing happening so that's like what I think we've got to be aware of and how so then going back to when we give kids phones I think we need to be thinking about community response so some schools will get involved but some schools want to more wash their hands of it but it has to be like having a because the phone is part of makes you part of the community so we talked earlier in the podcast about kids you know looking to their community looking to their peers making their generation now once one kid gets a phone in that year or a few kids get a phone in that year you're really under that peer pressure to get a phone and it's about how we get because at the moment that was it used to happen at senior school and then it's it's sort of has gone lower and lower so that kids are getting them at the end of primary school and how we push that back up again I think we can only look at community responses but as an individual parent you need to be setting boundaries which are firm and kind so they have to be firm because the phone is really addictive and once you get a phone or once you get on fortnight it's really hard to you know again something you never hear mum can I can I get off fortnight now can I come my homework can i come and eat a healthy meal you've prepared you know it just doesn't happen so so that you needs to be firm but it needs to be kind as well it needs to be an environment where they can come and talk to you if something bad's happening if something's spiraling up and of course things spiral up quicker on the phone because it's it can happen overnight it doesn't just happen like in the old days when nobody phoned after 9 p.m you know it was it's a different time so I guess that's my those my ideas so you know I think kids when they get a phone they need a phone contract like between you as a parent and them but it shouldn't be a kind of absolute kind of authoritarian kind of you're very you must do this you must do that it's more like this is a responsibility we want you to do this we want you to come and talk to us we we're going to have a look at your phone we're going to support you with the phone with a scaffold your use And in terms of access to your child's phone, which you can get, you know, through various means, at what point is their private life and their privacy something that you should be absolutely respecting?

38:33And if they don't know that you're able to see into their, you know, their phone, is that something that you should be doing to a certain age? I think that it has to be open I don't think you should be doing it secretly um secrets in families are generally toxic I mean some people get away with it but generally how you see that play out so it could come into the contract then yeah yeah absolutely should be up front because if you think about other things where you're parenting like when you're parenting them to cross the road or to learn to drive or table manners whatever it is teaching them to cook food you're giving them guidance and you're you're scaffolding and that's the kind of idea that you want to be doing with their phone so I think absolutely you know in those sort of early years say you hold out to secondary school and give them a phone then the first couple of years you should be really upfront I'm going to check your phone regularly and whether you do or not them knowing you will will also help them behave in the right way on their phone.

39:34What is it doing to a child having you know what are you seeing when you first started your career when kids didn't have phones that what is it doing to them and is it absolute you know is are you seeing changes in all children um in the way they communicate or how they see the world through the through their phones or are some people more prone to kind of the addiction if you like than others oh gabby that's so hard that's such a hard question it's it's because it's so multi-level started out I'm assuming when you started out kids yeah they did they weren't having phones yeah I don't think the phone is the whole problem I think the phone is a reflection of what we're seeing in society more generally and it's a cause of what we're seeing in society more generally and it's a reflection of what we're seeing you know it's both so you know what do I see I mean I guess just to pick out a few examples so you know we know that girls we're not sure about boys There's some preliminary research, but we don't really know this.

40:34But certainly for girls, you know, viewing lots of images of so-called perfect bodies, I'm putting that in speech marks here, you know, leads to greater body dissatisfaction. And body dissatisfaction leads to anxiety, leads to depression, leads to eating disorders. So that's something we pretty much know for sure. And we know that they're viewing many, many more images than they did before. And we know that even if those images are sort of dressed up in fitness, that they still can kind of impact on a girl's sense of their body. So that's one thing we know. We know that the viewing of lots of porn impacts on particularly men's sexual satisfaction in later life and their sexual performance.

41:17That's a really useful bit of information to have up your sleeve when you're talking to boys, doing a sort of sex education talk, you know. So we really want to keep our kids from viewing lots of porn. We know that porn can be addictive. We know what they call that there's problematic gaming use. So that's a proportion of people who use gaming can come addicted to it. I think there's questions. I've certainly got questions about the increase we've seen in ADHD and people having poor attention span with the use of platforms which don't encourage long attention. So like TikTok, for example, you know, and I certainly even feel that now, you know, I struggle now to get, if I'm watching a film at home, to get through the film without Googling who the actor is and what I've seen them in before, you know, so our attention is being impacted, I think, but there isn't a whole lot of research on that yet.

42:15But, you know, in terms of research, it's really early days. So kind of, you know, that question of how is it impacting on us There's so much debate about that. But I think we have to, you know, as parents, we just have to come back to what we see and what we know and how we feel. Yeah, we overuse our phone. We know how it makes us feel. And you're right about the attention deficit that all of us perhaps are creating in our own beings by using screens and phones. Just one more thing about that, actually, Gabby, that I just forgot. The other way that it might be interrupting mental health is in the interrupts other things.

42:52So, you know, when we stay scrolling on our phone, we don't get enough sleep. We don't get enough exercise, you know, all those sorts of things. So, but then you see, conversely, we can use our phone for that, right? We can have a yoga app on our phone or, you know, monitor our steps. So it's just about how we use the phone as well and teaching, helping our kids learn that.

43:29Rose wants to know what is the best way to instill self-belief and confidence in your child? Okay, so I would say through your relationship with them. And so again, you know, my book, I go through babies and toddlers and school age and teenage years and about how the relationship has to change. What a lot of people think is that kids are going to get self-esteem confidence through their achievements. But actually, the confidence we get through achievements is often like a bucket with a hole in it. We just need more achievements to come in the top as the achievements drain out the bottom. And what really gives us confidence is having strong relationships with people it's mattering to people and having and feeling that and that's you know as a parent you know at first as a baby you're you're the center the linchpin obviously of your your baby's life and everything goes through them and then you're through your childhood years you know they love you so much and they would say oh I want to marry you mummy you know they want to live with you forever and then you go through the teen years and the teen years where they separate more and so it's thinking about how you can value them all the way through and really the relationship also so relationship is you know one of my three principles but the relationship is also what takes over from firm when you get into the sort of later adolescent years so when they're starting to step into their own independence what keeps them kind of more on the straight and narrow and wanting to have your good opinion and so keeping that relationship strong and not coming down too firm that kind of sledgehammer firm that I talked about earlier is really the best way to keep them confident.

45:12And, you know, we talked about exam pressure too, and knowing that you value them, whatever exam grades they get, or, you know, whatever their success is, or whatever the zigzags on their career or academic path are, that's going to give them the most confidence. Yeah. So just to finish, Dr. Tara Porter, thank you so much for your time. Just reminders, you've mentioned them a couple of times, but your three kind of guiding principles. Yeah, so it's about having a good enough attitude to your parenting and trying to find that point where you're giving your kids lots of stimulation and opportunities, but it's not turning into a horrible exercise in striving for you.

45:54So you're constantly exhausted or, you know, your child being kind of overwhelmed with expectations on them. So finding to find that sweet point in your parenting, which is a constant, you know, negotiation. And the second point is about being a relationship based parent, which is about putting your relationship with the changes in your relationship. Yes, over the years, putting your relationship with them at the center of your parenting rather than their outcome or their achievements, which is what leads to the confidence. And then finding the balance between firm and kind. So not getting too caught up with always having immediate obedience, but having some sort of consistency and boundaries in your parenting and with a kind stance when you can.

46:35You know, kindness trumps firmness, really, so that you maintain the relationship over those years. Thank you so much. And I do recommend that obviously we have only scratched the surface of the book. And I think it's a really useful guide to, it's one of those books that everybody should kind of have on their shelf to pull out and go, hang on a minute, what does she say about that again? Because you just kind of sometimes need reminding of those things, don't you? Because your best intentions are there. But as you say in the book yourself, you've had moments where you thought, was that the right reaction?

47:07I'm not sure it was. And that's you as a parent. So we all need a bit of help on this stuff. Thank you very much. Thank you.

47:19She's a practicing clinician, Tara, so I know her time is precious and I'm really grateful that she took out the hour to share her insights with us today. I do think her book is brilliant. So if you want to get your own copy of Good Enough, it is out right now. She also wrote You Don't Understand Me, The Young Woman's Guide to Life, which is worth checking out. Please let me know what you thought of this episode by leaving a rating and a review and share it with family and friends, maybe even your school WhatsApp group. We didn't even get on to WhatsApp groups, did we? We're all in this together, right?

47:48These young people are the people that we are going to grow old with. They're going to be us in 20, 30 years' time. This episode was produced by Spiritland Creative, and I'll be back at the same time next week. Thanks so much for joining me. Catch you then.