Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - “Daycare Impacts On A Child’s Brain & Socialization Myths.” - With Dr. Erica Komisar, LCSW

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

What does science say about the negative effects of daycare on a child’s development? 🤯How can you tell if your child has attachment issues? 🥺What should single parents do? 👩‍👧Is socialization important for babies and toddlers? 🧸Are daycare kids at an academic advantage? 🎓How should a working mother structure her schedule? 💼Psychoanalyst Erica Komisar, author of ‘Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood In The First 3 Years Matters’, lays out the scientific evidence on childcare, and how Amer...

growing up, we're told to follow our dreams as women. We select a career field based on whatever interests us. We put our whole heart and soul into it. We crush glass ceilings. We get the degree. We make more than our male counterparts. And then what happens to so many women? Well, we have a baby and then we feel an intense desire to stay home or adjust our work hours to be with our kids. And here's the dilemma. If we quit, what did all of the blood, sweat, tears, long hours and student loans mean. Was it for nothing? This is such a common experience for women that it seems odd. We don't advise young girls on this early on. Before she chooses her major, why isn't there a conversation about how you will likely not want a career that requires so much

in office time away from your family? According to the mom project, 43% of highly skilled women and leave the workforce after becoming mothers. If we teach girls, it is a high probability that they will want to stay home eventually. Wouldn't that have some sort of impact on the type of career women might choose? Many of us have come to this point in our lives right now or we're close to it.

We're weighing the pros and cons and wondering which path to choose. Quit a six-figure job as a powerful and inspiring executive and stay home or try and juggle both. What is the success rate of a child's development for the mom who opts for the latter. Specifically, how much does staying home versus a nanny versus daycare matter,

if at all, from a scientific standpoint. I also want to say there is not a political agenda to the daycare discussion. At least for me, I see this is simply what is best for moms and babies and society at large. Doing what is best for children is apolitical, or it should be. I was absolutely disgusting. by people on the left and the right questioning why I was attempting to have a daycare debate earlier this summer. My response is, why haven't we? Gen Xers completely gave up on this debate in the 90s.

Now I want to know what impact, if any, that had on millennials in Gen Z. Since my first episode on the subject in July of this year, I could not believe the amount of messages from people saying that they've quit their jobs, that they realized they could make it on one income. Someone even downsized their house so they could afford to be with their babies. And I want you to know I have wept over these messages. I want you to know how insanely proud I am of you and how inspired I am. But I also haven't given up on or forgotten the angry comments from people who didn't give that episode a chance,

the people who demanded more evidence, or just still aren't fully convinced that daycare should be a last resort. Perhaps you fall in the category of having no other option, and you would like a professional to give you advice on how to make the best of that situation. Well, today's guest is a clinical psychoanalyst. She has over 30 years of experience in private practice studying, early childhood development, and various forms of child care, and their impact throughout a child's life.

She is the author of the book Being There, why prioritizing motherhood in the first three years matters. And Chicken Little, the sky isn't falling, raising resilient adolescence in the new age of anxiety. Her book Being There Completely Changed My Life. It taught me that we don't need to feel pressure to accomplish every goal we have in our childbearing years and affirmed why we shouldn't.

She flew all the way to Phoenix from New York City for just a couple hours so that she could record this episode in person and then she's going right back to her patience. I am so grateful that she was willing to do that just for us. And she told me off camera, I did that because of how important I believe this conversation is specifically for your audience's age. So please be sure to leave a five-star review for this episode. Here today to dive in to the daycare debate is Dr. Erica Komazar on the spillover.

When you got pregnant for the first time, you were operating a massive practice as a psychoanalyst. you were writing your first book being there, and the evidence that you discovered about the lack of a present mother in the first three years was actually so compelling that you ended up deciding, oh, I've got to pause this entire book. What did you discover as a psychoanalyst that you think is important to know in the working mom debate? Well, that you can do everything in life.

You just can't do it all at the same time. And as you say, I was actually not pregnant. I had a young child. And I was seeing that what was happening with children, I was seeing that children were suffering because of the lack of presence, physical and emotional of their mothers and or their fathers, if their fathers were raising them. And it was disturbing to me. So as they say, practice what you preach.

And I knew that it wasn't going anywhere. So I put it down. And I put it down for many years. How many years? Well, I didn't exactly put it down. So I did a lot of research in those 13. years. I put it down for 13 years while I was raising children. It wasn't until my oldest was about 15 or 16 that I picked it up again and started really pursuing it a little bit more in earnest.

But I did a lot of research in the fields of neuroscience, not my own research, meaning researching, neuroscience, epigenetics, attachment, and psychoanalytic theory, putting it together all of that research. There's already a field of science. It's called neuropsychobiology, which is the pulling together of those sciences. And so basically that research helped me to write the book 13 years later. Now, I just want to get this out of the way. Are you here to say that moms should never work? No, no. And that's a misunderstanding of my book entirely. You know, the title of the book is being there, why prioritizing motherhood in the first three years matters, and no one seems to see the word prioritizing when they see the cover of the book.

The book does not say you can't work. It says that in those three years, the critical period of brain development, and the truth is throughout your children's childhood until they're 18, they need you, and they need you more than you think they need you. And in the first three years, zero to three, and then also in adolescence, which is nine to twenty, because now we know it starts earlier and ends later. Oh, that would explain a lot when it comes to dating. Yeah, yep, yep. And actually men's prefrontal cortex is really don't stop developing until about 28,

women about 25. Okay. And so, yeah, and it affects all kinds of things in those years. But basically, parenting is really important. And somehow we've gotten the message that we're not so important and that children don't need us. but in fact they need us for that critically for their brain development. Yeah. So you believe that daycare is the most problematic child care choice,

even though it is the most common method in America for children under two. If it's the most problematic and yet the most common, how did we get here? Well, it became an agenda of, again, I would consider myself a feminist. I've worked my whole life. I've been working since I was, 16 years old in one way, shape, or form of another. But I also understood as a therapist

what children needed, so I was willing to, you know, taper down my career in those years. And so that's really what the book is about more than people having to, you know, not work. But basically, when life got expensive and we needed to have two working families to support families, but also the feminist movement pushed the idea that you couldn't be part of the feminist movement unless you went out to work. There's a story, Mary Tyler Moore was in communication with Gloria Steinem. Gloria Steinem asked Mary Tyler Moore, who had a show called The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which was a big feminist show in those days. It was a single woman, a journalist working on her own, living in, I can't remember if it was Minneapolis or,

And so Gloria Steinem wanted Mary Teller Moore to be the face of feminism. And Mary Taylor Moore said, no, because you've basically told women, paraphrasing, that to be part of the feminist movement, you need to leave your children and your children will be just fine. And Mary Tyler Moore said, no, actually mothering is the most important work. So, but that really fueled, so, you know, by Gloria Steinem saying women must go out to work to be feminist. I think fueled it and then the economics of it. I mean, daycare is driven purely by economics. It's not driven by what's best for children developmentally. It's not driven by what's best for families.

I mean, 60% of mothers in America want to stay home with their children, at least when they're young, or have the ability to work part-time so they can prioritize their children. Now, that's 60%? Is that just a biological response that, the majority of mothers have that wanting to stay home is just natural to us? I hope so. I mean, it is biological. Our instincts as mammals is, is to prioritize and be maternally preoccupied. But I think what we've done is we've damaged our instincts. The title of being there was originally

the lost instinct. The publisher thought it was too heavy and too scientific for lay people. I thought it was a good title. I think both titles are good. But basically, we can damage our instincts. And it's what we've done. So yes, it is a biological instinct to be preoccupied with your children when you have them. So when we shut that instinct off, we also damage the generational expression of that instinct to our children. Is another force driving the daycare numbers in the United States of America, parents not understanding how much you really need to get by, like thinking that we have to have two parents working full time? Well, the truth is you don't need to have two parents working full

time, but you need to adjust your expectations and you, you know, and depending on the parents. I mean, there are some really poor working families who, and it usually is the poor working families. And so they sort of fall into the cracks, right? They're not on welfare. They're not well to do enough in middle class so they can afford maybe one parent to stay home. So the ones that are most afflicted are the working poor. And we are the most uncivilized country in the world, other than I think there's only Papua New Guinea as another country that doesn't have paid maternity leave. And even the paid maternity leave that was suggested by Biden, I think it was three months, which is, I always say to mothers that three months is just when your babies wake up from the afterbirth experience.

They're not done with the attachment experience. The attachment experience happens over a three-year period. So there's a lot of misunderstanding. People throw around the term attachment. What they don't realize is that bonding can occur in the first. few days, few weeks, even few months. But attachment is the experience of children being reassured of the safety and security of their mothers throughout that three-year period. So if you get your child very attached to you and then you ditch them, which is what it means to go to work

eight to ten hours a day and leave them in daycare with strangers or leave them with a strange babysitter, that child who is neurologically fragile and vulnerable, You could say you kind of go into a shock state. I mean, it causes terrible stress on children. Children in daycare show very intense signs of increased levels of cortisol or the stress hormone in their body and their salivary. And so, you know, we know that it causes stress to children. It's not good.

Stress on the brain, particularly under a year old, is really not good for children. So, you know, daycare, as I always say, is the least good. option for children. Why it's, why it's become such a popular option, again, I think it's lack of information, it's lack of knowledge, and it's living in an uncivilized society that does not provide paid leave to parents who are really in need of that paid leave, you know? Sure, paid leave would be great for every parent, but particularly for those parents who couldn't get by on one salary, because they're really just eking by. we need to have paid leave in this country and not for three months. We need to have paid leave for a year.

And then we need to have the option for mothers to work part-time for another two years. And part-time work is meaningful work. It can be meaningful work. And it also provides income to the family. Yeah. But it still allows mothers to prioritize their children. And why we don't talk about that more in society, I'm not sure. Why is it crucial for moms to not repress? feelings of guilt. So guilt is a signal feeling. And that's also widely misunderstood. So I think a lot of these things are just, so what you're doing is great because you're informing people, because I think people are not that educated, to be frank, about some of these things. A signal feeling like pain. So if you break your ankle running or playing basketball, you'd stop running or playing basketball

because you'd be in pain. So pain is a signal feeling, and it's meant to stop. us in our tracks and to go get help with that ankle, right? Guilt is the same thing. What it indicates is that we're in some kind of internal conflict over that decision. And society tells us to ignore the pain of guilt and just to push through and everything will be okay and your kids will be okay. I mean, that's like the number one theme on social media with moms. They express guilt or doubt about parenting decisions that they're making. And then people in the comments immediately start reassuring them and say, no matter how guilty you feel, don't worry, you're making a great choice.

Even if it's something like I feel physically sick dropping my kid off at daycare, all the comments are like, don't worry, you'll get through this, you'll get over this. Are we doing a disservice to other women by doing that? We are. We are. You would never say to somebody, unless they were a professional athlete and they had to finish a You would never say to somebody, play on a broken ankle. No, you would say to them, stop playing, go get medical care. Let's look at this more seriously. So guilt is meant to be a healthy reaction

to conflict. It's meant to stop us in our tracks and to get us to reflect and look at the conflicts and resolve them in a healthy way. When we tell women to ignore their guilt, we are not doing any favors to those women, and we are definitely not doing any favors to their children. In the 90s, the daycare debate was really heating up. We were told that putting a baby in daycare so that mom could go back to work would have no impact on a baby as long as they had loving parents. Over 30 years have passed. Who was right? So the kibbutz experience was the same. That was a great experiment where they separated parents from their children. And the result of that was years of consequences of mental illness in those children and attachment disorders. So what

we've done is we've created two generations, now to be three generations of children with attachment disorders. And what we know is that attachment disorders are related to, correlated to certain forms of mental illness. So an avoidant attachment disorder is most correlated to depression in the future. An ambivalent attachment disorder is most correlated to anxiety, and a disorganized attachment disorder is most correlated to personality disorders like borderline personality disorder, which leads to things like suicide and suicidal ideation. So there are longitudinal attachment studies. We have them now. Over 20 years, now going on 30 years, the same kids who had secure attachment when they were in the first year of their life, 20 years later, or 30 years later, still have secure attachment.

And the kids who had attachment disorders in the first year of their life, 20 or 30 years later, still have those attachment disorders, but now correlated to mental disorders, like depression, anxiety, and personality disorders. So we have evidence. This is what's crazy. I mean, there's so much evidence that shows that, you know, this grand experiment of treating children as if they are objects, not respecting with a great deal of sensitivity and empathy, that they are much more emotionally and neurologically vulnerable than we give them credit. You say that there's a misconception that babies are like Teflon, that they're super resilient, that you could, you know, take them to do different things or make changes in their life and that

they're just going to be able to get through it. But you say that's, the evidence does not show that to be the case. Not at all. Just the opposite. In the first three years, your brain is very susceptible to the environment. So by the end of three years, 85% of your right brain is developed. And that's as a result of your environment. So, you know, if I were to say which part of our personalities are constitutional, I'd say maybe 10% of our personality is constitutional. The rest is environmental. And so that means that mothers and fathers have a great deal to do with whether that child develops into an emotionally secure and mentally healthy person. And the first three years is critical to that development. Any time that I try to have this conversation,

or I see people trying to have this conversation, which there aren't many right now in today's culture. But is it your experience that a lot of Americans who make the excuse, well, this is all well and great talking about the dangers of daycare, but we can't afford to be a one-income family. Do you think the majority of American families can't afford to be one-income? I mean, again, it's about choices. And these aren't forever choices, right? So people also get confused about choices and sacrifices. So first, we don't like sacrificing.

We like our material things. We like two cars. We like our nicer houses. We think that the better school and the better house and the nicer car and the better vacations is going to help your child in some way. And the truth is that children don't give, can I say this? They don't give a shit about those things. What they care about is that you're there.

And that's what they actually need. So for middle to upper middle to wealthy, affluent families who have choices, I think there are a lot of excuses to be frank about these choices because these choices aren't forever choices. You know, being present as much as possible in the first three years can change the future of your child's mental health. And so, you know, if you think about that kind of investment, if somebody told you that if you invest in this investment for three years, that in 20 years that investment's going to explode, would you take it?

You probably would if somebody could guarantee that for you. And I'm telling the listeners now that if you make that investment and make those sacrifices in those early years, you will have incredible returns on your investment. But the opposite is also true. If you're not willing to make those sacrifices and those investments in the early years, you are going to have hell to pay later on. Is it a guarantee? No, because what I say is that there's always survivors of a shipwreck. But for the most part, children are incredibly, I can't emphasize this enough,

children are incredibly neurologically vulnerable in the first three years. I think what's also happened today is that we've lost our empathy. we're sort of an empathically impaired society, a narcissistic society. Yes. That talks a lot about me. Yep. Do what's best for you. Yeah, that's right.

It's always do what's best for you as a mom. You need me times, you know, self-care, do all this stuff. But the conversation never revolves around the child. No. So if you read all the articles about work-life balance, all the articles in the newspaper, that was the other thing that was bugging me, you know, 23 years ago, all the articles in the newspaper were about parents, not about children, not about the irreducible needs of children, but about the narcissistic needs of parents. And it was so disturbing to me.

So as a psychoanalyst, what I tell my patients who come to see me is that you lend your narcissism to your children. You get it back and you don't give it all away, but you lend a great deal of your narcissism, meaning you make the sacrifices to focusing on another human being when they're most vulnerable. And then the returns on the investment are incredible. But if you focus on yourself in those early years primarily and not on your children, then again, there are consequences to that. My life was forever changed when I interviewed Dr. Courtney Kayla earlier this year on the spillover. I know you guys learn new things during these interviews. because you tell me. But you got to know that I do too. And Dr. Courtney was talking about how conventional

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Alevia.com with code Alex 15 or click the link in the description. On my first episode about this with Suzanne Benker, we talked about how daycare was created to be a last-ditch effort. This was for, you know, the totally vulnerable in our society, the widows, the single moms, the very, very low-income families. The childcare costs, though, in America have just skyrocketed exponentially. And a lot of that is due to how many people are using the service when it wasn't supposed to be that way. So obviously, then they're having to charge more because there's not as many spots to go around. Now we're in this situation where federal funding that was given to a bunch of daycare centers during the pandemic so they could stay open is now being, is seizing. You have 70,000 daycare centers that are about to shut down.

That's a lot of families that are going to need a new plan for child care going forward and a lot of low income and single parents that are going to need first choice for those spots. is it time that we have a discussion about married couples using daycare when they don't actually need it? Yes, and I also think we could talk about the options. What are the options? Because we don't talk about the options. We just go straight to the worst option. So let's talk about the better options because there are some people who need options. Until we have a better plan as a country, until both sides, the liberals, and the conservatives, get together over this issue and not pay lip service to families first, but actually put families first, which means you have to put your money where your mouth is. And that means I love building bridges. I love building roads. Wonderful. But actually, in the end, if you don't have a healthy population, who gives a shit about the buildings and the bridges. I mean, I hate to put it that way. We are not investing in our people. We're not investing in

children. So what are the options? If you must work and you can't afford a single surrogate caregiver. And explain what you mean by surrogate because everybody's having a certain picture in their mind. Yeah. So basically a babysitter or a nanny. One person who is a sensitive empathic nurture, who is going to be, have an investment in that child's life going forward, who you're going to keep for a long time. But that's expensive, right? So one thing, the next best to having a mother there is having a kinship bond. And that means having a grandmother, an aunt, a grandfather, a cousin, somebody who is extended family who's going to be in that child's life for the entirety of that child's life.

That would be the next best thing to being there, kinship bonds. And the problem is because of this, what I call kind of a family exodus, people moving away from their families of origin to work in different places. Going from multi-generational families to the nuclear family. Right. It's sort of like a diaspora of people away from their families geographically. And some of it's for financial reasons, but that's caused, that's basically caused chaos in terms of child rearing. So it is best if that child has kinship bonds. If that's not possible, then it would be a babysitter or nanny.

If that's not possible in terms of financially possible, then I like what they do in California, which is something called share the care. They share care with another family. They hire a nanny, but they share the cost of the nanny. And still, the ratios of caregiver to children is lower than any daycare center you will find. Now, why is that important, the ratio of caregiver to children? So the idea is that children under the age of three, and particularly under the age of one, when they're in distress, they need to be soothed from moment to moment.

And that's how you keep their cortisol levels down. That's how you help them to feel buffered from stress, right? And help them to feel emotionally regulated. You regulate their emotions for them. Think dialysis with kidney disease, right? You can't do it for yourself. You have to be tied to a machine. Children are basically dependent on their caregiver to regulate their emotions for them. If we don't do that for the first three years for moment to moment, soothing them when they're in distress, then they don't internalize the ability

to do it for themselves later on, which is what depression, anxiety, ADHD are? They're all stress disorders, if you will. So, you know, this idea that we, we have, have someone there from moment to moment. I want you to imagine, or any of the listeners to imagine what it's like for that baby to be one of five to eight children in a daycare center under the age of three, you know, sometimes under the age of one. In Sweden, it's 12 to 1 because, and we model after Sweden and we shouldn't. you know, because daycare workers get sick a lot.

They're totally overwhelmed, and there's a lot of absence from their jobs, and so they have to, you know, bunch up, and you end up putting your child into a daycare where it's no less than eight to one. I want you to imagine soothing eight babies in distress who are crying at the same time. There is no way those babies are getting soothed. There's no way they're feeling attended to in terms of their emotional regulation. And so that's the best reason to reduce the ratio is because if you have three children to one caregiver, then you're actually may be able to, capable of soothing those children when they're in distress.

So sharing the care, I would say maybe it's a little more than daycare, but daycare has gotten so expensive, maybe not. And so the idea is share the care with another family, your next door neighbor, your cousin, your sister. and if you have to go to work, that would be the next best thing. Daycare is the least good option for children, and it shouldn't have to be an option for poor people either if they have the resources to pay a grandmother or an aunt. So what I advocate for is something called family stipends, which allow families to make their own choices with child care. And that means either that mother is capable of staying home part-time or she's able to give that to a family member. to stay home part-time.

What does evidence show developmentally happens to a child who is put in daycare before the age of three? Well, so the amygdala is this tiny almond-shaped part of the brain. It's the stress-regulating part of the brain, which is meant to remain offline for the first year and is meant to remain very quiet for the first three years. And incrementally becomes active as children face little bits incrementally more and more of frustration, right? So you'd say we always face frustration as babies. From the time we're born, we might not get our diaper change quickly enough. Our mother may have run to go to the bathroom

and we have to wait a minute longer to be fed. So we always have little bits of frustration. You know, we're crying and we need to be picked up because we're in distress, but our mother takes a little bit longer. But those kinds of incremental moments of distress aren't actually build resilience. They're not disturbing to babies. It's the longer periods of absence that are disturbing and cause the cortisol levels to go up and basically cause the amygdala to become active too early. And when the amygdala becomes active too early, it actually enlarges. The problem with enlarging too early is it's a little bit like a light bulb in your kitchen. If you turn the light on in your kitchen and you leave it on overnight, or for many days and many nights,

what happens to that light bulb? It burns out, blows out, right? That's essentially what happens to the amygdala. If it's activated too early, it enlarges and becomes too active too early, and then burns out, shrivels up, and ceases to be functional. And we need that for the rest of our lives to be the part of our brain that helps us to deal with adversity, cope with stress, And so that child then loses the ability to cope with stress and adversity in the future. And babies in daycare have been tested and they have very high cortisol levels. So think of fight or flight. The fighter flight response is our evolutionary stress response as human beings.

When we are under stress in the old days, think of like a predator chasing you, you would either fight or you would run, right? And so babies go into fight or flight at a very early age before they're supposed to. Because of being put in these child care situations? Because they're separated from the source of their safety and security. Again, the projection onto very young babies that they're like Teflon or that they're resilient to stress at a young age is they're not. They're incredibly vulnerable. And so somehow mothers are being trained today to close their eyes to their children's pain, to not see their distress, to turn away from their distress, and to not be empathic.

And what you said about, you know, how online mothers are told, just ignore your guilt, you're basically telling mothers to shut down their sensitive empathic nurturing, which is critical to the survival of that child. Yeah. Okay. So in the book, you describe something that I had never heard and it had to do with the way as an adult we perceive time and the way a baby perceives time. Right. So when you as a mother drop your baby off for an eight-hour workday, what does that feel like for an infant?

It feels like forever because they don't know you're coming back. So object constancy doesn't happen until much later in infancy and toddlerhood. So if your baby is, you know, six weeks or three months old and you leave them, they feel like you've died. They feel you're not coming back. And do they actually experience feelings of grief? They do. They experience terrific feelings of loss. And they go into, as you would when you were a baby, they go into a hypervigilant state of stress.

If your survival, remember, we're mammals that have. have the longest period of dependency on our primary attachment figures than any mammal, right? We can't function without our parents. We can't survive. So they go into a state of hypervigil and stress because they're afraid of their very survival. So every day that you drop your child off at day in their brain, they perceive that as every day they're experiencing their mother dying. Right. Essentially, that their mother disappears and is not. returning for them. I know that my audience listening to that, Erica. Several of them, just knowing them, they're probably crying. Again, I don't see that as a bad thing because if they're crying,

it means that they're healthy. It means that their conscience is working. If our conscience doesn't work, if our guilt doesn't work, then there's something wrong with our ego. There's something wrong there. So we do need to be concerned about this. It's the mothers who aren't concerned that I'm most concerned about. Is it true that the only way mothers are able to go back to work after three months is to emotionally disconnect from our babies? That's exactly right. They get into what we call schizoid states where they flip a switch and they say, I'm not going to care anymore. And the problem is if you flip that switch every day, you know, your baby is going to start to flip that switch too. So mothers who drop their kids off a daycare are mothers who leave for long periods of time. They

have to develop a system where they disconnect. And so what happens is the babies then have to develop a similar system of disconnecting, which is tantamount to an attachment disorder because babies aren't meant to disconnect in the first three years. So then you're basically prescribing an attachment disorder for your child. What can you tell us about the negative physical reaction that a mother feels as she's handing her baby to the daycare worker? Well, hopefully she feels guilt and hopefully she She feels tension and conflict, and hopefully she feels sadness, and hopefully she feels a pull towards her child. So these are all healthy emotions.

Why we pathologize these feelings, we've pathologized these feelings and told mothers, it'll be okay, your children will be just fine because of this agenda. And the agenda is work is more important than family. That is the agenda. making money and work and the material world that we live in is more important than our children. Now, again, I have to go back to the idea that this is not an elitist idea because I am someone who advocates in the government for paid maternity leave. So this is not coming from a place of elitism. Right.

How does the average maternity leave in America line up with what science tells us about how long a baby needs its mother? Well, there is no average maternity leave. something called paid family leave, which is optional based on employers. In other words, employers have the option of giving their employees some time off, but there's actually no required governmental paid maternity leave. So we have nothing in this country because we're a country that likes talking about family but does not really believe in putting our money where our mouth is. It's so frustrating. It's so frustrating because also this was crazy to me. I read an article the other day that President Biden had written in the 80s saying,

wait a second, why are we pushing daycare on families? This is a huge mistake. We really need to stop pushing mothers to work outside of the home. And then all of a sudden now he's advocating for institutionalized child care and that we need that. And I'm like, the mentality around this keeps changing and I'm wondering what is driving that. So I wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal in response to that that Biden article. Actually, they attacked Biden for that article. In the 80s? No, he was attacked for that article. I think it was two years ago. He was attacked because somebody dug up that article and said, look at this guy. It was someone from, I believe someone from the left who dug it up and said, look at this guy, he's an anti-feminist, he's an old

fogy kind of thing. And I defended him in the Wall Street Journal and said, actually, he was right on target. Why he's back down now is political pressure and political will. Again, it doesn't matter if we get a conservative or a liberal in his president. They both, excuse me, they both suck when it comes to this. So Biden does believe in his heart of hearts, I believe, because of, you know, you have to look to the past to say he clearly believes that mothers are important. It just became unfashionable to hold that stance now. It became unfashionable and it became untenable. Yeah. It became. So what he did is he proposed three months of paid leave, which is not enough. Three months is just when your baby is waking up. Your baby is so, if anybody here has seen a three month old

baby, they are incredibly tiny and neurologically fragile. And so what I'm talking about is a year of paid maternity leave and then the ability to continue on at partial pay for another two years, or at least the ability to work part-time. And so that would enable mothers to really, you know, look, in countries like Slovenia, in countries like Estonia, the former Soviet-block countries. We say communism did a lot of bad things, but one of the good remnants of communism was that the former Soviet bloc countries, most of them have almost three years of full paid maternity leave. And if they don't, they have 80%. And so we'll never in this country get near that. I just don't. I'm a realist, right? So even though what I say today may sound like it's futuristic,

I'm a realist. I really do think we could get to a year of paid leave in this country if there was political will and the desire to put our money where our mouth is. Families in Finland are getting $15,000 a year to do whatever they want with. And you kind of mentioned this earlier. For them to have those stipends for their family is still coming from then super high taxes. I mean, in Finland, the tax rate is 43%. So if the average salary is $60,000 in America, for example, a finished tax rate to pay for child care, then would mean that the family would only take home $35,000. Instead of a stipend, my question to you is, wouldn't an even better solution just be to get rid of the tax, to get rid of income tax entirely?

Well, you're getting into an area that I'm not as comfortable talking about, but I will say that some of the things that I've talked about publicly and said might be things we can look at are a social security tax for child care, meaning that at a very young age, we start to, as soon as we start to work, we put into a social security tax for child care. It's maybe a separate tax that allows us to save towards a period of time when we want to raise our children. Given that most young women are not having children until at least their late 20s into their forese, 40s today because they want to have careers first, which is a perfectly viable thing, you know, the idea that you develop your career when you're young and then you have children a little bit

later. If that's the case for most young women, then why not have an enforced savings program where you put money away and that money is given back to you when you're raising children? And also, you work a little longer in your life. I mean, I'm going to work until I'm 100 if I can because I love my work. Now, not everybody loves their work and a lot of people want out of work, but, you know, the idea that we all have to work a little longer so we can have that three-year period of being able to raise our children, that would be a small sacrifice, I think. Yeah. And so that's one of the things that I recommend. There are other things recommended. You know, yes, Finland is high taxes, but Finland also, now mind you, Finland is under a lot of pressure because of Sweden.

to change what they're doing. Finland has been a model, and I hope that I'm not losing my example of a good model because they're going the way of Sweden, which is sort of more like what we follow, which is women should go back out to work as quickly as possible. But Finland is still holding strong with this stipend. I don't think they're getting rid of it so quickly, but there's a lot of pressure on Finland for institutional care and taking that stipend away. I believe in that stipend. I believe that people should have their own choice to do with that money, what they choose to do in terms of child care. If it's for themselves, if it's for a family member, then so be it. But I believe in that choice. This is almost certainly TMI, but my mom was always terrified of tampon. So I had to

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for how many hours a mother should work that considers the age of her child? Well, we know that the longer you leave your child when they're under the age of three, the greater the chance that they'll develop either, remember I said fight or flight, that they'll either develop aggressive behaviors, behavioral problems, and or a flight response, which is ADHD. And we know that ADHD diagnoses are seriously up in very young children. And a lot of that has to do with the stress. So think of ADHD as not a disorder. There's a movement to take the D off of it because it's not a disorder.

It is a symptom of children under stress. Wow. So, you know, there are a rare few number of cases that are truly brain disorders, developmental disorders. The rest of it is cortisol in the brain, causes the brain to go into that HPA access, that stress response. So think of the fight or flight and think of ADHD as the flight part. So we have very young children being diagnosed either with behavioral problems and early signs of

hostility and aggression and or ADHD. And what's the correlation between kids who are diagnosed with ADD or ADHD and being put in daycare? Oh, there was a study done that showed that children put in daycare. The more hours they spent in daycare per day, the greater the chance they developed either aggressive behavioral problems and or attentional issues. Is that only before the age of three or any age? The study was done on children who were in sort of in that area of preschool, right before preschool. So it would have been daycare.

What is better for part-time moms working five days a week, only a few hours a day, or a couple days a week, but those days have longer hours? To work every day a little bit. Okay. So you want to be away from your child for shorter periods of time. Think of it this way, that your child can hold it. Think about holding your breath underwater. You might be able to hold your breath under water for one minute, maybe if you're really strong two minutes. That's what it's like for children when you go away. They're holding their breath until you come home. And so the short of the period of time, the better.

So if you need to go to work, go to work for two hours a day when they're really little. maybe when they get a little bit older, do three hours a day. By the time they go into primary school and they're in school for six hours a day, bingo, you have six hours a day to work. So I say follow your child's needs rather than pursuing your own needs in those years. And so that means more days, shorter periods of time per day. So if you're working longer days, you're actually asking your child to hold their breath for eight to ten hours. And they just can't do that.

There are moms who say, well, my child has been in daycare since they were six weeks old, and they're fine. My child has no issues. At what age will a parent truly be able to know if their child is not fine? Sometimes the symptoms come out in early childhood. Sometimes they'll come out in middle school because there's certain what I call vulnerable points where you can see a breakdown of their defenses. So essentially what we ask children to do when we put them into day. care is we ask them to develop defenses, pathological defenses, to the absence, right? And so sort of like calluses, if you're walking on rough stones, you develop calluses on your feet. At some point,

those defenses break down. And there are certain vulnerable points of development where they break down. One is in early childhood when you separate and you put them into a school environment where it's a drop-off environment for long periods of time. Another is middle school because of what's happening in adolescence, they're once again more vulnerable. So that's often a time of breakdown. So you might see it in early childhood. You might not see it until adolescence. And that means any time between nine to 25. And that's what we're seeing that some of these defenses hold and almost go into a state of, you know, submersing like a submarine. And then will rise up in adolescence because adolescence is a very vulnerable time in development. And so then we're starting to see symptoms of

things that happened a decade earlier. Wow. Now, what about the socialization benefits of daycare? I know a lot of stay-at-home moms who still put their kids in daycare one to two times a week because they think that it's benefiting them socially. No, just no. I can debunk that. I can debunk that myth. So children under the age of three do something called parallel play. They don't actually, until they're about three years old, even interact with one another, you're not putting them in daycare for their own good. You're putting them in daycare for your good. And that's the problem.

It's not for their good, because what benefits a child under the age of three, sure, you can go to classes like Mommy and Me classes or gym classes, but as long as you're within eyesight or a physical touch of your child, so they can what Margaret Mahler, a very famous psychoanalyst, called emotional refueling. She called rapprochement. The idea that you can explore the world with great courage

and inspiration, if you will, if you have your primary attachment figure within reach your eyesight of you. Ah, okay. So you can tottle off and explore, but if you can come back and get a hug or look back and make sure your mom's there, then you can tottle off and explore again.

And that builds resilience over time. And I feel like we see that at Playgrounds a lot, Like a kid falls over and they're totally fine. They don't even have a scrape, but they fake cry or whatever and run over to mom for a few seconds of reassurance. And then they're like, okay, my mom's here. Now I'm going back. That's it. That's called emotional refueling.

If you're not there, they're not emotional refueling. They're having to hold their breath. You brought up Mommy and Me. I got a lot of questions about Mommy and me. Do you think that that's okay to do? That's for moms. And that's a good thing for moms because we never raised children. in isolation. So people who live in places where they live like the suburbs or, you know, where

they're very isolated in their own homes, that was a very unnatural way to raise children. So if you live in a suburb, you have to create a community where you're not alone because you're not meant to be alone all the time with children. As you say, we had multi-generational living for thousands of years where our children were being raised with aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins. I have an episode. I have a guest that's coming on this season. to talk specifically about this subject. But, you know, it's really conservatives who champion this idea of the nuclear family. And this is so, this is like the top. This is what everyone should aspire to. And the more I learn, I'm like, this was a huge mistake. Yeah. The nuclear family within

the extended family. So meaning children do best when they grow up in stable environments. And stable environments are experienced by them by having lots of loving people around them who are permanent fixtures in their lives. That's the problem with daycare too, is the transient nature of the people that they attach to in a very superficial way. What is the turnover rate for daycare? It's so, so high. I mean, daycare workers are underpaid, undertrained. They get sick so often because they're around your kids and kids are dropped off sick. But more importantly, they drop out because it's an untenable job. I mean, it's an impossible feat to be able to soothe five to eight children who are in distress. It's just untenable. So you talk about in the book that as soon as your child develops some,

you know, some form of attachment to a child care worker in a daycare setting, then they leave. And then your child is constantly starting that process over. It's kind of the revolving door of child care. So what you want is people in your child's life who are going to be there for a very, very long time. And so we've lost that because we lost intergenerational living. We move away from our families. I always say to young people, if you're going to have children, unless you have some real beef with your family and for good reason, abuse or something, move back home. Oh, that's hard for me to hear.

I really don't want to go back to Indiana, Erica. Or move close to a sibling or an aunt or someone. Choose where you're going to raise your children near. Maybe marry someone who has family. nearby. Maybe someone, if you're from Arizona, then marry someone whose mother and father live nearby. But the idea is when we raise children in isolation away from family, you're making things much harder on yourself and you're making things much harder on your children. Is there such a thing as high quality daycare or educational daycare? A lot of moms seem to defend their decision by saying

things like, well, my kid goes to a very high-end daycare. My kid is smarter than non-daycare kids. So, sure, there are daycares where the daycare workers are paid a little more, where they're educated more than other daycare centers, but you're still dealing with the high ratios, because it's not economically feasible for the daycare centers to have ratios of less than four or five to one. And that's on a good day. Those would be good daycare centers would be maybe five to one. and if they tell you four to one, they're going to be lying to you because on any day that a daycare

worker is sick, which is often, they're bunching together, they're not getting somebody to fill in. They're having the daycare workers that are there cover. And so, yeah, but people are spending private school tuition on daycare and they think that their kid is going to have this better outcome by doing that. I know, and that's the myth that's been promoted by, I think, again, the basis for it is behind it is an economic myth. It's, it's, it's, you will do better financially, which is better for the economy, which is better for everybody. So, um, as if the money matters more than the mental health of your children. Um, and again, it's an economic formula, not a formula of, of, of health for,

for anyone, actually. There are a lot of parents who assume that if they were to stay home with their child, their child wouldn't learn as much. as being in daycare. Is that true? No. So children learn, in the first three years, children learn through play. And they learn through play with their attachment figures. So, and it's not constant. It's not like you constantly have to be engaging and interacting with your child. No, flashcards are cognitive development. That's left brain development. Throw those away. I'm talking play with manipulative imaginary play, play with dolls, play with trucks, play with trains, play, real play. For how long should that be the priority over things like the flashcards?

Throw the flashcards away. Period. They don't work? No, throw them away. Throw them away. But I feel like I have friends who are parents who are doing the flash cards and their kids know how to say ball and stuff. No, throw them away, throw them away. Okay.

So here's the deal. Cognitive left brain development, which is. is learning language, learning letters, learning numbers, learning math. This is secondary to social emotional development if we're talking about long-term sustainable mental health. Okay. Social emotional development is the sock before you put on the shoe. Most people put their socks on before they put their shoes on, right?

So if you do cognitive, if you promote and push cognitive development, before you've allowed your child to develop organically from a social emotional perspective, which happens through play. Free play, imaginary play, not through flashcards. That is cognitive development. So left brain development has to follow right brain development, not the other way around. So we've also gotten very confused about that. And a lot of these daycare centers are calling themselves schools and even preschools from three to five are promoting cognitive development when in the old days it was play. Even kindergarten was the garden of children. That's what it means. It was free play. By the way, that's the Waldorf model does do that. It does. And that's the best

model. It's still their model. Is that really your opinion? Yes, that's the best model. That or Reggio, Emilio, or the Waldorf model or the, or the Waldorf model, or the, the nature school model, they have adopted the old model of play first. Okay, so let me tell you my wild idea. And also, I always say this, you know, most of my audience, you're parenting real kids and I'm sure that I'm going to change my mind on 100 things when I have real kids. So I am practicing on imaginary children, okay? But here's my wild idea. I love the idea of doing play focus until eight years old, no formal school till about eight. Is that crazy, dumb, or do you like that idea? Most experts would say from three to six, because your children

shouldn't be in daycare and they shouldn't be in preschool until they're three. They don't need it. It's not for them. It's for you. And it's not good for them. So let's be very straight about it. But from three to six, the idea of incrementally introducing socialization and group environments when they can actually start to interact with one another, prepares them to go into school later. What should the school be like? I was going to say, do you like, do you think that we start kindergarten too early in America? I think we start preschool too early. I think preschool shouldn't start till four. I don't think we need more than a year of preschool. But okay, so again, I'm a realist. So there's certain things that are not going to change. In my day, and I'm almost 60,

I had a year of preschool from four to five, and then I had kindergarten. Preschool was a few days a week for a few hours a day at the age of four. And then when I was five, I went to kindergarten. It was nine to 12, five days a week. That was it. And then in first grade, it was the whatever, six hours a day. From three to six, as Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers said, play is not an escape from the real learning in childhood.

It is the serious learning. of childhood. So from three to six, I think most experts would say play needs to be the way, explorative play needs to be the way that children learn. After six, you can start to teach them, but you have to be very gentle about cognitive learning. Because if you force feed them too quickly and too intensely, left brain cognitive learning, it will backfire. You will not have a child who loves learning. You will not have a sustainable learner. You will have a learner that feels pressured and that breaks down later. So if you think of it as just incrementally growing that child's love of learning. So I would say between six and eight, you can still have progressive techniques of education,

which involve experiential learning and still involve a good deal of play. But I think most schools at the age of six start to introduce the idea of left brain cognitive development. And it's how we do it in those years, that we don't do it in a forced way, that we don't do it in an aggressive way, and that we don't do it into intense away. I am shook about the flashcards. Throw the damn flashcards away. Again, that is some kind of anxiety in parents that their children won't be successful. So when people come to see me in my practice, the first thing I say is, relax. This is not a race to get to some imaginary finish line. This is your child's brain. And you want to approach gingerly and sensitively and with caution, not aggressively trying to download information, left brain information.

What about reading books, though, that are just like red, blue, just, you know, things like that. That's fine. But again, reading books, you don't want to overwhelm them with books. You want to allow them. There are parents who see books as play. And books are not play. Books are interaction with parents, but they are more left brain. Books are more left brain. Now, you can introduce books at a young age. It's lovely to introduce books, and research is shown that it's important to introduce a love of books to children at a young age. So reading to them is a wonderful activity, but you have to be careful that you don't overdo it,

that you balance it with free play. You have lots of wonderful toys in your playroom in your house. And, you know, even Montessori, quote unquote, manipulatives, I like baskets of little things that they can build with, that they can play with, that they can experiment and explore with. I've seen that comment. I've seen comments from my listeners that say things like, well, my two-year-old is in Montessori daycare, so they're learning and they're, you know, above. It's too young. It's too young. Well, someone is getting fired.

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Mimi skincare, modern skincare, timeless values. What are the stats on a daycare child's academic success and intelligence versus a non-daycare childs? IQ is something that is not experiential or environmental. So we're not going to talk about intelligence. We're going to talk about how do they do long term. So when I wrote being there, a lot of teachers reached out to me and said, and they all said the same thing. I should have kept all the emails and compiled them because they all said the same thing.

They said, I'm a teacher in primary school. They said, I can tell you. One of them said I did an experiment. I asked every kid who was in daycare who had been in daycare in their childhood to raise their hand. And she said, I'm right every time I can tell you which kids have been in daycare because they either have attentional issues or they are more aggressive than the other. kids or they seem kind of unbound. And so that is the message I got from teachers, which is teachers can see which kids have been in daycare and which kids have not. What could be some signs that

your child does have attachment issues or is struggling specifically due to time apart from you? So there are signs to look for. And in my book, I talk specifically, but I'll just summarize them a bit. When you go out to go to work or even go out, to go to meet a friend for lunch or go for a walk or wherever you go. And you come back as a parent. The reunion is quite important, meaning that moment when you come back together with your child, if your child is forgiving and loving and wants to hug you and has a healthy reunion response, then we say that child's doing generally okay. And maybe we would say that child is securely attached. If when you return, that child turns away from you or turns toward the caregiver that

they're with, then we know that that child is probably developing an avoidant attachment disorder. If you come home and that child clings to you as if for their life and cries and clings and can't be soothed for a long time, we say that child is developing an ambivalent attachment disorder and will potentially develop anxiety. If that child, when you come home, turns away, then clings, then slaps you in the face or gets angry at you, and then turns away and then clings and kind of cycles through. Then we know that they're developing a disorganized attachment disorder. What's the most dangerous?

The disorganized. Now, the reason it is is because the other two attachment disorders, the children have a strategy. So say if your mother is an avoidant type, if she's kind of, as I said, schizoid or you said, what do they mothers have to do to leave? They shut off the light switch. If children have that kind of mother that can shut off the light switch, they tend to develop that same disorder themselves. It's called generational transmission of these attachment disorders. So an avoidant attachment disorder mother will more likely produce an avoidant attachment disorder

child. A mother who's very anxious, who maybe had an ambivalent attachment disorder herself, will pass that on to her child. Should pregnant women be finding out what their attachment style is before they give birth? Like, would that be helpful? I do think that women who are pregnant should go and explore mothering before they have the baby. So, you know, it's interesting because we find out what gender the baby is now. That's a thing that never was a thing before because we couldn't do it, you know, years ago. But now we can for the last whatever.

40 years we can test, you know, what kind of gender our child is. That's really important information. because in that six months that you have left, you process that information. You are saying, huh, I had a fantasy of having a girl, but now I'm having a boy. I'm kind of sad. I'm kind of depressed. I have to mourn it. So when that baby arrives, I can embrace that baby with my whole heart.

And sometimes in that process, women have to go to therapists and should go to therapists and explore the child they're having versus the child they thought they were having, right? In the same way, I think going to therapy when you're pregnant or when you want to become pregnant is quite a good thing because you're really exploring how you were mothered and that impacts how you will mother. Okay. How much time is necessary for you to physically be with or near your child at each stage of development?

Well, I always say more is more. The more physically and emotionally present you can be in those first three years and to be throughout your child's 18 years of living with you. Because although adolescence ends at 25, at 18, they generally either they'll leave or go to college or move out. And so, you know, we want to give them as much as we can in those 18 years. That doesn't mean hover over them. It doesn't mean become a helicopter parent, which is an ambivalent,

which, by the way, is an ambivalent attachment disorder. So when people say, oh, you mean a helicopter parent, I mean, no, no, that's actually an attachment disorder. But the idea of being able to feel attached to your child, to have created that attachment security, but also to allow for separation. The father of attachment was a man named John Bolby, and he had two huge books, which I encourage parents to read. One was called attachment.

The other was called separation. And it was all about how these two things blend together and integrate into a healthy child, that a parent who can allow for healthy attachment and be present physically and emotionally has to also allow for healthy separation. Does it necessarily have to be the mother who's home? Could it be the father? So mothers are uniquely biologically equipped to do this if they're healthy. There is a lot of mothers today who are not that healthy because of multigenerational now, as I said, attachment disorders pass down to them. And so when they have children, often what gets triggered is postpartum depression.

So the myth of postpartum depression is that it's a hormonal disorder. There are hormones involved, but the hormones trigger an emotional reaction, which is they open a door to your own experience of being mothered. if you had a very happy, healthy, loving experience of your mother who was present for you, then what opens up in that door is that loving, love-filled experience for your child. If you had a mother who was narcissistic or depressed or distracted, or a mother who was physically there but was emotionally absent, right? You can have a lot of mothers who are physically home or emotionally checked out, right? You need to be both.

then what gets opened when you give birth is that door. Okay, this is the first time I've ever heard this, that it's not hormones that are causing postpartum depression. Hormones are the catalyst that opens the door. They're the key that opens the door to something that is historical. So then how should women be treating PPD therapy? It should be a combination because for some women, they are so depressed they can't get out of bed.

So what I say is the best use of drugs of pharmaceuticals, is when you're vegetatively depressed and you can't function. If you're mildly postpartumly depressed, yes, talk therapy and feelings-oriented therapy, not cognitive behavioral therapy, feelings, psychodynamic, psychotherapy, where you can actually explore the relationship you had with your mother. Does having somebody else, another adult you're close to present, for the majority of the day, if you're struggling with postpartum, does that help with anything? It can. You shouldn't be alone, that's for sure. I remember interviewing a yoga teacher who specializes

in pre and postnatal yoga for my book, and she said that women who are postpartumly depressed should never do yoga alone. Why? They should do it in a room with other women, where they can touch and be next to. And so, you know, the idea that there are some things, like yoga and meditation, although they're wonderful, I don't recommend them to very depressed people. I recommend them to anxious people. But depressed people, I say you need to be around people. You need to be able to talk about how you feel you need to have contact with other people. But that's not, I mean, it can't just be, there's a difference between having your friend around or an aunt around or someone you care about around and having therapy. Because therapy really helps you

to explore the underpinnings. It helps you, it helps you to explore what's behind that door. What are the scientific differences between a mother and a father being the primary caregiver? So mothers and fathers each produce hormones, and those hormones basically affect their nurturing behaviors. Mothers produce high levels of oxytocin. It's what we call the love hormone. And you produce it when you give birth, when you breastfeed, and when you nurture. And it affects your behavior in that it makes you a sensitive empathic nurture.

It makes you tune in to the distress and the discomfort of your children, and it produces soothing response in a healthy mother. I'm going to say it again, in a healthy mother. There's a lot of mothers who do not respond to the distress of their children, but it means that they themselves have been damaged at some point. Okay. A father can produce oxytocin when he stays home with his children to nurture. There's actually an inverse relationship between oxytocin and testosterone, so the higher

the levels of oxytocin, the lower levels of testosterone, which says something about the future and sexual behaviors between couples. Because if a father stays home, he can produce oxytocin. It tends to make him more like a father. So when fathers have surges of oxytocin, it makes them what we call playful tactile stimulators of children, tickling children, running around with them, throwing them up in the air, playing physical games. with them. It's an evolutionary way that fathers encourage separation responses in children. So fathers and mothers have different reactions to oxytocin. When fathers were given intranasal oxytocin in experiments, they didn't become more like mothers, they became more like fathers,

more like manically like fathers. Fathers and mothers also produce a hormone called vasopressin. It's called the protective aggressive nurturing hormone. Mothers and fathers produce it, but fathers produce more of it. So when mothers and fathers lay in bed, there was an experiment done where mothers and fathers were in bed and sleeping, and when a baby cried, the mothers woke up immediately. We're vigilant to the cries of the baby's distress. Fathers slept through the cries almost every time. But when there was rustling of leaves outside the window, fathers woke up and mothers slept through it. What were the rustling of the leaves? It would have been predatory threats. So fathers are more wired biologically to be tuned into certain kinds of threats.

Mothers are more tuned into babies distress. A lot of moms think that they're, they've defeated the problem by working from home. So they're like, okay, perfect. I'll take my kid out of daycare, but I'll work from home. However, if someone is working from home and they're just always on their computer or always on their phone because they're working, does that cause problem? where baby sees you, but you're distracted all day? So it's a complicated answer. I would rather see mothers at home working than at work, because at least when their children are in severe distress,

they can be there to soothe their babies when they're in extreme distress. But it is complicated. If you are that distracted that your child experiences you is absent in a way, what's better is if you have a block of time that you work, what I always say to mothers is once out, once in, the younger the child, once. That means if you're going to go to work for three hours, a room in your house, shut the door,

have a caregiver there, your mother, whatever, and stay in that room for that three-hour period, then come out and don't go back into that room. Okay. One goodbye and one reunion. that's all they can take. Think about what it's like on the nervous system of a child to go in and out and in and out and in and out, right? So every time they say goodbye, it's a real goodbye for them. It's not like for you as an adult. And so have a small incremental period of time that you work

at home, close the door, and then come out and be available to your child. If your kids are a little bit older, let's say preschool age, older toddlers, is it better for them to be in front of a TV all day so that you can work from home? or is it better to just outsource them and drop them off at a nanny or a neighbor's house or something while you're working? It's better that they don't spend hours in front of television. So, you know, television is fine in very short spurts, particularly educational television, but I'm talking short spurts and don't abuse it. So if you abuse television, then it becomes a dissociative behavior.

And so what we know is that if you get a child used to dissociative behaviors like staring at a TV, then it can lead to other dissociative behaviors later on, like eating disorders, drug addiction, alcoholism, gambling, those are all video game addiction. Those are all dissociative behaviors. So you don't want to promote dissociative behaviors at too early an age. If we have to choose daycare, what are the green flags and the red flags to look for? If you had to choose daycare, make sure that the ratios are no more than three to one. that the employees are paid above average, that the, as you say, the rate of them, of their absenteeism and the transitory nature of them leaving is very low.

And you ask the daycare center for those figures. And if they don't provide them to you, then you go look for another daycare center. But again, unless you really are desperate, I would say daycare would be a little. the least good option for your child. Who is, if you had to say, okay, you are the ideal candidate for daycare, who is that person? I don't like that question. I don't think anybody's a good candidate for daycare. So what about a single mother or a very, very low-income family?

I wish that a single mother would get together with another single mother and hire a babysitter. Okay. Okay. I think that's fair answer. If you feel more comfortable and competent in an office than being a mom, what should that tell you? It should tell you that maybe you have an attachment disorder that needs to be looked at, that if you find your children boring, it's generally a sign of postpartum depression. If you find other children boring, it's not, meaning it's not natural to attach to other children,

but if you can't attach to your own children, then, yeah, Houston, we have a problem. I'm single and dating, and let me ask you a question. Would it be reasonable to walk out on a date if the guy ordered his steak well done with ketchup. I mean, only a monster would do that, right? All right, well, I guess bad news if you're trying to get on my good side and that's how you order your steak, but no matter how you order your steak,

good ranchers won't judge you. Oh, wait, hang on. I was told to say good ranchers won't judge you too much, but definitely a little bit. You care about what your family eats. So does good ranchers. That's why they've spent years building relationships with local American farms

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Try Good Ranchers today by going to Good Ranchers.com with Code Clark for 25. $25 off. That's good ranchers.com with Code Clark for $25 off on America's best meat and wildcought seafood. Find all the details in the show notes. Good Ranchers. American meat delivered. Is there any correlation between the record rates of anxiety and depression that we're seeing in Gen Z and millennials and the child care that they were exposed to before the

age of three? Yes, indeed. What did we find out? Were all of us in daycare for the most part? It's not just about daycare. It's about, because remember, there were a lot of kids who had mothers who were home. So, you know, people who are listening to this might say, well, my mom stayed home, but I also got depressed or anxious. It also has to do with the

mental state of the mother. If you had a mother who had a narcissistic personality, who was depressed, who was resentful about being a mother, who was physically absent or emotionally absent, it can also happen. So in any case, you want to look at your beginning. So the cognitive behavioral movement was meant to be just for certain things. It was meant to be very specific to things like OCD or behavioral issues. Because it's been applied so broadly with a broad stroke, it's being misapplied. You really don't want to go to a cognitive behavioral therapist to talk about any of these things. You want to ask when you see the person, are you a psychodynamic psychotherapist. Are you a therapist who will help me to explore my beginnings? This was strange to me in

your book. You said that we need to be telling babies, even if they can't talk, when you are leaving, and then what time you will return? Oh my gosh, they understand everything. What do you, what was that about? They understand everything. You never leave before saying goodbye. I don't care how guilty you feel. But I thought that was what you're supposed to do. Like if you hire a babysitter and the kids are crying, you're trying to go out for a date night, you sneak out. Never. You never sneak out. You always say goodbye and you always have to let your baby mourn with you for a few minutes before you leave. It's sort of like the three little bears. Not too short, not too long, but a little bit of time. Give them a hug and you say, I see you're sad and you're angry at mommy and that's okay. And you reflect how they feel. You mirror their feelings. Don't cheer them up and then tell them that you're coming back and tell them when you're coming back. Even a baby that can't talk, you say I'm going to be home at 4 p.m. So I'm learning Spanish now. I always wanted to learn Spanish. And for my older brain, it's a good thing to

keep learning languages. So I've taken three Spanish classes. And I already understand almost everything. I can't speak it. But I can understand so much of what goes on around me. So what does that say? Babies are much more adaptive to learning than my old brain. And so you understand everything from the time you're in utero. You can hear voices. You can, and when babies come out, they start to learn language. Not in the way that you think about it. I mean, they can't speak for a long time, but they definitely understand everything. And when you say, Mommy, Mommy is here, but mommy's going out for a little while, and Mommy will be back, and they understand everything. And when you sneak out, it gives that baby the feeling that the world is not a safe place because you could disappear at any

moment and then they don't trust you. Why is nighttime even more important than daytime when it comes to a working mother? So, nighttime is the hardest time for babies because the dark is experienced and losing consciousness, which is what sleep is, is experienced by children to be permanent and to be devastating, almost like a mini death. And so losing consciousness is a scary thing for them. And so we treat sleep very casually as adults and think, oh, baby should sleep through the night. And with very little empathy of the fact that it's a very scary time for children. And it's also a very scary time for a lot of adults, which is why there are so many adults on sleep medications. 50% of America's on Ambien or melatonin. And that's because 50% of America is afraid of losing consciousness, is afraid of

sleep. It's not talked about because it's too psychological in a country. that's not very psychological, that's very drug-oriented. Take a pill. You'll feel better. But the truth is that sleep, when we sleep well, unless we have a sleep disorder like narcolepsy or some kind of brain disorder, sleep is an indicator for us as therapists as to the mental state of a human being. If a person comes into our office, one of the first diagnostic things we ask them is how are you sleeping? And if they don't fall asleep easily, if they wake too much in the night, if they can't sleep, if they sleep too much, then it's diagnostic of some mental disorder. Okay, well, there was also some advice, though, about like a certain amount of time

that you need to be spending with your kids when you get home from work before bedtime happens and stuff. So working parents, if you're going to leave during the day and be away for longer periods of time, so we say you have to pay now or pay later. And so you can't just come home and spend an hour with your children and put them to sleep. You need to put in that time with them. The Pew Research did a study that said that most Americans spend no more than 90 minutes a day with their children. Only 90 minutes?

Yeah. And that is not enough to raise healthy children. So when you come home from work and you've been working all day, then you have to expect that that child's going to need you in a way that's very intense. You are not putting that child to sleep at 7.30 or 8.30 or even 9. So that's why your kid might struggle going to bed and doesn't want to go to bed. It's because they didn't get to spend time with you all day. They didn't get their irreducible needs met. What is your plea for the youngest generation of women who are becoming mothers currently

or advice to young women who aren't in that stage of life yet? Do the hard work of preparation. Get to know yourself. Get to know your own experience of having a mother and being raised in a family. that was imperfect. And explore those things before you have children. Don't wait till you give birth and that door is opened. I mean, if you had a wonderful childhood with a loving mother and father who are very present, then the likelihood is when you give birth, the door that will open will be a joyful door. But don't wait to know which door you're going to go through.

explore it before you have children. For the mom who regrets the child care decision she made for her child in the first three years, there's actually a second chance window in adolescence. How so? So adolescence is the second critical period of brain development. It starts at nine. It ends at 25. In boys, it ends in men, it ends at 28, closer to 28.

And in that period of development, it's a reorganization of the brain. So the first three years is what we call neurogenesis. Many, many, many synapses grow, many cells grow, and then there's an overgrowth. And then in adolescence there's a pruning, like pruning your bushes outside your house. And that pruning is almost as important as the growth cycle. So if you don't prune the brain in that period, and the pruning is done by parents. And so by parents being present in adolescence, they're now pruning the bushes. Right. And so that's very important. There's lots of consequences to not pruning. So that period of

brain development has a lot of similarities to the first critical window in that a lot of that reorganization and pruning brings up the same kinds of conflicts and issues. And sometimes the conflicts and issues of the first period of critical brain development that didn't go well. For the mom who currently has a kid in daycare and she's listening to this and she's like, okay, I want to make a radical change. but I don't even know where to start or what to do. I mean, we talked a lot about the importance of transitions and easing children into transitions because they're not like Teflon and change is hard.

So, but when we see the studies and the evidence here of how bad daycare is, should they just yank them out immediately and like tomorrow we're not going to daycare or is there a process or what? Take them out of daycare. Absolutely. But let them say goodbye. Let them say goodbye to their teachers. Let them say goodbye.

You know, transition them out of daycare. and the alternative, you know, you have to understand what the alternative is. So you don't want to take them out of daycare and then leave them at home with a strange babysitter. I mean, if you're going to stay home with them, your child will want nothing more than to stay home with you or to play with you or to go to classes with you. And so you will have a very joyful child. So if you're going to be the one taking care of them, then absolutely the sooner the better. But if you are going to take them out and then put them into a situation that's equally strange to them or maybe even more strange. Like hiring a nanny.

Right. So you have to transition that nanny. You have to be home for a few weeks, helping that child to get used to that nanny and helping that nanny to understand what you want from her. And that is sensitive empathic nurturing, not a discipline-oriented approach. You go through an entire chapter on like all the things that you need to do as a mother with your nanny in front of your child to ease them into being cared for by her. Yeah, you need to train them. You need to, you know, some nannies don't need training. Some nannies have been amazing mothers themselves and naturally have a gift for nurturing.

And you can tell whether they're sensitive empathic nurturers. And you can only tell if you're around them. So you need to be around them for a while. So, you know, at least for a few weeks, staying home and side by what I call side by side play, where you sit down and you're playing with your child and the nanny can watch you playing with your child. And then the nanny sits on the floor and you, instead of weaning out, you wean the nanny in. And then you wean yourself out, if that makes sense. But you need to be a part of that process.

So your child feels safe with that nanny and that your child embraces that nanny, attaches to that nanny. And you'll see pretty quickly whether that person has the gift of attaching to your child and whether your child takes to that person. So I've had many people call me and say, my child never took to the nanny. The nanny was very harsh and discipline-oriented and not very tender. And I said, well, why did you hire that nanny? So, yeah, you don't want to pick a tough, organizationally wonderful, but emotionally insensitive nanny. That's not the idea. She's not there to organize your kitchen drawers and fold your laundry correctly.

She's there to be a sensitive empathic nurturer to your child. Someone who loves to play with your child, someone who can reflect your child's emotions, someone who's not, someone who's a little more psychological. How are we supposed to kindly and lovingly tell someone that's close to us about the dangers of daycare? of a sister or a best friend and we now know the realities of how bad this is. But how do you tell them without them getting sensitive and then jeopardizing your relationship? Give them a copy of my book and say, you know, I heard this person on a podcast. It's sort of interesting. Lots of interesting research you might be interested in. Bingo. Make her the bad guy. I don't mind being the bad

guy. I'm used to it. In summary, what are the true costs of daycare? The costs of daycare are long term, the consequences are sustainable and not in a good way. We're talking about an epidemic of mental illness in children and adolescents, which I think is rooted in the way we raise our children from a young age. Tell me quickly your advice for a woman deciding what she wants to do for a career if she knows that she wants to be a mother one day. My advice is think of it not so much as a sprint. Think of it as a marathon. And don't think of it as a linear thing. Think of it as careers are not linear.

They never are. We do something that's good for us in the short term, and it may not be good for us in the long term. So pick a career that has flexibility where you have some control, and then be willing to step off the track that you're on to make the sacrifices you need to to be a parent or to have the flexibility to be that parent. and have faith that when you come back on the track,

it probably is going to be a different track. Well, I think you were telling me off air before we started recording about how you originally thought you wanted to be a lawyer, right? And then you kind of worked in that and you realize these mothers, they're all divorced or they never see their kids or they're so stressed and unhappy. I mean, what do you say to the girl that's like, but I really, really want to be a doctor or I really, really want to be a lawyer knowing that those careers require a lot of time away from children if you were to have children?

Well, do that before you have children. And then when you have children, be brave enough to step off the track or step onto a different track. You can be a doctor and have a part-time practice. Yes, you lose some of the prestige, but prestige is a pretty unimportant thing when you're comparing it to the mental health of your children. Same with being a lawyer. There are plenty of lawyers that I've treated who've stepped back and worked part-time and have gotten off the partner track and they've found their own way or they started their own small practices and sure, they make less money and but they're happier. And so it's not that you can't do these professions at all, but you have to think about them more strategically. I do think that we don't force

young women and young men because young men support young women to stay home, remember? So if we don't encourage them to learn this stuff, then, you know, you end up married to someone, and then he says to you, but you made a promise to me that you would work forever full time. And so that's a huge thing. This is a huge thing is that we as women are entering relationships or entering marriages, I should say, and both of us are assuming that we're going to be a two-income household. But what ends up happening is that we have kids and then we realize I don't want to work. But you bought this house thinking you were going to have a two-income household, et cetera.

So really, we should be talking to our partners before marriage of, hey, if I were, I know I work now, If I were to change my mind and I wanted to stay home financially, would you be okay with that? Do you have a plan on how we would be able to accomplish that? Yeah, and let's plan for that. So I don't know how I'm going to feel when I have a child, but if I want to stay home with that child, I want the option. And so what would it take financially for us to have that option? What different kinds of choices would we need to make? And if that guy says, no way, I want daycare, I want you to work, then I would not walk from that relationship.

I would friggin' run. Okay, I have both of your books here in a little secret drawer. I'm going to give them to you and you can tell us about your two books and what they cover. Being there, that's the first one, about zero to three, being there, why prioritizing motherhood in the first three years matters. And then the one about adolescence is called Chicken Little, the Sky isn't falling, raising resilient adolescents in the new age of anxiety. And again, as I said, first critical window of brain development, second critical window, guess what as parents, you're important in both. Do you talk about in the second book about what happens if your teenager doesn't want to talk to you

anymore and you're going through all those problems? Absolutely. Think of it this way. Adolescence needs you in a different way than they did when they were zero to three, but they need you quite intensely in adolescence. And if you're not around because you misinterpret their burgeoning independence, and pushing you away as not needing you, and you go off and, you know, do your own thing and you're never around, then you're not there to help regulate emotions that they still need regulated

in adolescence. Are you still accepting new clients? Yes, I am. And then do you have to live, you live in New York City, that's where your practice is. Do you have to be local or do you do remote stuff? I see patients all over the world. Wow. Okay, great.

So if somebody wants to reach out to you about possibly hiring you to work with their child, or them or their family, where can they find you? www.comasar, k-o-m-is-a-r.com. And there's a tab for consultations. Great. Thank you, Dr. Coma-R-R-R-for coming on the spillover. Thank you for having me. If you're like, wait, I was just getting into this.

I had so many more questions. Trust me, girl. So did I. That is all in her book being there. She goes into such granular detail about not only every question I asked, but so many topics that I just, I don't have time for,

unless, you know, I sit down for six hours with somebody. So if you loved this episode, you will love her book being there. I'm very excited to read her book that she wrote about adolescent years and teenagers, which she talked about. So I'm so thankful that she gifted me with the books. I love it when a guest is an author and then they gift me the book. Because I was reading her book actually, the digital version. So, you know me and my big bookshelf in my living room.

I'm very excited about that. Obviously, I have to back promote my first daycare episode that I did with Suzanne Venker. that was in July of this year. So go back, listen to that one. And we are back next Thursday at 9 p.m. Pacific, midnight Eastern, anywhere you get your podcast. And of course, the real Alex Clark YouTube channel. I am going to continue for one more week in a row. A parenting type of theme here.

And I'm going to be talking, ooh, here we go. If you thought the daycare was controversial, we are going to be talking about gentle parenting. This is a huge trend that is very, very popular amongst blogger moms and just moms in general. I would say millennial moms especially are obsessed with the gentle parenting technique. But the guess that I have on is going to talk to, is it biblical? From a Christian perspective, is it biblical? If you're not a Christian, then I guess it doesn't matter. Do gentle parenting if you want.

But specifically talking about does this parenting style line up with scripture? should Christian parents be participating in this trend. And we'll also just be talking about discipline in general. That is next week on the spillover drops at midnight eastern on Thursday nights. I'm Alex Clark and this is the spillover. Love you mean it. Bye. Period.