Important Studies in 2017

This week’s article is  The Most Important Scientific Studies for Parents in 2017.

While the article refers to these studies as scientific breakthroughs, I found most of them confirmed what most of already know from working with students.

The studies focus on an array of topics:

• How adults constantly checking their phones during family time impacts their children’s behavior in a negative way
• How delaying gratification and embracing struggle have become more mainstream—with positive results for kids
• How corporal punishment has many long-term negative effects
• How to reduce racial bias in young children (the most interesting study to me)
• How first borns succeed in school and life

As you’ll read, the article is geared more for parents, yet the conclusions of the studies have implications for us in the classroom and how we teach children.

Joe

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As busy as 2017 was for parents, it may have been busier still for the development psychologists, biologists, neurologists, and family-focused sociologists researching how children become functional adults — or why they don’t.

The last year saw the publication of an outsized number of game-changing studies that might, over time, alter the way that parents go about parenting.

Do scientists know for certain how to raise the best possible person and how to track that person’s progress from the crib to the board room? No, but they know a great deal more than they did a year ago and, thanks to their diligent work, parents know more too and can make better informed decisions. 

Here are the scientific breakthroughs from 2017 most likely to inform parenting decisions for the next decade — or at least until the next breakthrough comes along.

Parents Trigger Bad Behavior By Looking at Their Phones

• Why it matters: There’s a growing body of research that shows that smartphones are not the smartest thing for adults and kids to stare at, but the study specifically links parents phone attention to children’s bad behavior. Working with 200 families, the researchers were able to demonstrate that when parents interrupt family time by checking their emails or texting, kids become more likely to exhibit oversensitivity, hot tempers, hyperactivity, and whining.
• What it means for parents: On some level, it seems that kids compete with phones for attention by acting out. Given that fact, it’s easy enough for parents to save both themselves and their kids some stress by checking the phone in a different room or turning it off at the dinner table.

Kids Are Getting Better at Delaying Gratification

• Why it matters: The Marshmallow experiment was first developed in 1972 at Stanford University and showed if kids could delay gratification (i.e. eating a marshmallow) for 15 minutes with an incentive (more marshmallows) they would go on to lead more successful lives. Since then, the results have been duplicated over 30 times. This year a review of this literature found that kids are actually getting better at the marshmallow test, giving hope for a new generation of successful adults with awesome impulse control.   
• What it means for parents: The idea that “kids will be kids” informs a lot of parental decision making, but it’s actually not totally true across time and generations. Kids will be kids, but that doesn’t mean that they’ll be kids in the same way as their parents were.

Letting Kids Wallow In Failure Might Actually Help

• Why it matters: Parents’ understandable impulse not to let their kids dwell on their mistakes or feel awful about their myriad failures may actually prevent kids from improving as much as they otherwise would. An Ohio State research team found that when people focused on failure, particularly how bad it felt, they were less likely to repeat the same mistakes. This lends some credence to the idea that you can frontload stress and be better of for it. 
• What it means for parents: Feelings of failure may actually be an adaptive tool and shielding kids from those feelings might limit their potential to succeed. Don’t rub it in when kids make a mistake, but don’t minimize it either. And lead by example: Don’t hide disappointments.

Spanked Kids Grow Up To Be Violent Husbands and Wives

• Why it matters: There’s already ample evidence that when kids are subjected to corporal punishment they’re more likely to display violent and aggressive behavior later in life, but this is the first study to link childhood spanking to abusive relationships. Intimate partner violence accounts for approximately 15 percent of violent crime, but this study suggests some of that could be stopped with different disciplinary methods.
• What it means for parents: No matter how tired, frustrated, and tested by your kid you may be, there’s never a good reason to spank your kid. It’s bad for them and it’s bad for people they’re going to interact with throughout their lives.

It’s Possible to Teach Kids Not To Be Racist

• Why it matters: The study of nearly 100 Chinese children demonstrated that teaching kids how to differentiate between different African American faces at age five reducing racial biases. The results suggest that when kids learn that people of a different race aren’t all the same, they’re less prone to make other generalizations about groups of people.
• What it means for parents: While racism may seem like a complex topic for 5-year-olds, teaching them how to tell individuals of a different race apart isn’t complicated at all and may inoculate them against later bigotry. Learning how to tell individual things with similarities apart is an important cognitive process for kids. Surrounding them with a diversity of characters as they learn may help them avoid becoming bigots.

First-Born Children Have Some Massive Advantages

• Why it matters: The study, which only looked at Swedish boys, found that first-born children were 30 percent more likely to become managers and take on leadership positions than children born at a different spot in the birth order. The researchers concluded that this likely has something to do with firstborns receiving encouragement that makes them more likely to stay in school and do their homework. Having higher IQs also helps.
• What it means for parents: It’s OK to recognize that your oldest may be more predisposed to academics and leadership. You’re not playing favorites and their siblings will have different individual strengths to play to.