Ep. 63: Mothering Heights with Michaeleen Doucleff

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As the author of the recent New York Times bestseller Hunt, Gather, Parent, Michaeleen Doucleff already was examining the culture and practice of mothering when the pandemic hit. Then everything changed for us all. Here, Medcan family physician Dr. Daiva Barnicke, mother of two young children, explores Doucleff’s story as well as the pandemic’s impact on motherhood in a frank conversation that could have therapeutic benefits for struggling moms. 

LINKS

Michaeleen Doucleff is on Twitter @foodiescience. 

Doucleff’s book is Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans. Here’s the New York Times book review. Buy it at Indigo and Amazon. 

“There’s a Better Way to Parent: Less Yelling, Less Praise”: An interview with Doucleff in The Atlantic. 

The NPR blog to which Doucleff contributes is called Goats and Soda. 

Medcan provides a Child and Youth Assessment designed to empower children to eat better, move better and think better. Learn more.  

INSIGHTS

The pandemic meant the closing of the preschool that Doucleff’s daughter, Rosy, attended. So Doucleff went from parenting her daughter for three or four hours a day, to up around 14 hours a day. Meanwhile, she also had the deadline for Hunt, Gather, Parent to meet. So Doucleff was forced into a position where she had to take the book’s advice, particularly the bit that suggests that North American parents should provide their children with more autonomy, and interfere less in their lives. “I really started to put those ideas into practice throughout the day, and I have to tell you, it saved us,” Doucleff says. (4:50)

Doucleff began thinking about her parenting in 2014, when National Public Radio sent her to Monrovia, Liberia, in Africa, to cover the peak of the Ebola Outbreak. “I saw these parents that were in this incredibly stressful situation,” Doucleff recalls, “and yet they were very calm and composed.” She was struck by the way parents in Liberia were being faced with something that was very harsh and hard, and yet the moms and dads there were able to keep their composure with their children. “I just started to think, maybe there’s a different way of doing things, that is more productive,” Doucleff says. (5:50) 

Doucleff studied parenting norms among the Mayan people on the Yucatan peninsula of Africa. She observed that moms among the Maya were far more likely to get their children involved in household work. As a result, the children were more likely to demonstrate the quality of acomedido — the skill of paying attention and then acting in a helpful way. For example, while she was in one Maya mother’s home, Doucleff saw a 12 year old walk into a kitchen and begin doing the dishes, without being nagged or even asked. She believes it’s possible to develop acomedido at any age, because Doucleff realized that both she and her husband needed to develop the quality as well. (14:40)

Child-centred activities are something that Doucleff believes harm a child’s ability to develop acomedido. Such events as four-year-old birthday parties, kiddie museums, trips to the zoo — things parents do only for their children, and never would do on their own — “these things erode a child’s motivation to help,” Doucleff says. “They teach a child to learn that they are special, that their role in the family is to do these special activities.” Doucleff dispensed with all child-centred activities, and instead started to go about her life as she would normally, as an adult. “Just stop doing things you don’t want to do,” she says. The idea is that life revolves around the adults in the family, rather than the family revolving around the children. (17:50) 

We often think children need to be entertained, and that it’s the parents’ duty to occupy children’s time. To keep them busy in some way. “No other culture in the world believes this,” says Doucleff. “And this is definitely not the way children evolved.” Get rid of that mindset, Doucleff says. “That’s doing them a disservice… A lot of life is boring, and hard work. And being able to occupy yourself, but also take initiative — that’s what we’re taking away from them when we constantly organize their schedules.” (20:15)

Power struggles between her daughter and Doucleff were an ongoing problem, and made Doucleff angry with her daughter. But then Doucleff researched parenting norms in Iqaluit. “Kids are just these irrational, illogical beings that don’t have emotional regulation, and don’t have social skills,” the Inuit elders told her. “It’s the job of the parent to show [kids]  proper behaviour.” Seeing the parent-child relationship in that light helped Doucleff to curtail her anger with her daughter, and be more successful at modelling appropriate behaviour. (27:00)  

In the US and Canada, one psychologist told Doucleff, parents teach kids to figure out what they want in life and go get it, which has its benefits. But Doucleff believes the single-minded devotion to goal attainment is done at the expense of teaching children to be helpful, and cooperative, and good family members. “And that's really what we needed during the pandemic, right?” Doucleff asks. “Kids to be working on the team with their parents… Moms have way too much on their shoulders. It’s time that the kids give to the mom, and help the mom. And in that process, the child learns all these skills, both physically how to do things, but also emotionally how to connect and bond with their parent in a way that they hadn't before.” (30:55)

Mothering Heights with Michaeleen Doucleff final web transcript

Christopher Shulgan: Hi, Christopher Shulgan here, with episode 63 of Eat Move Think. The episode features an interview with author and mom Michaeleen Doucleff, who wrote the New York Times-bestselling book Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans. Because the interview is conducted by guest host Dr. Daiva Barnicke who, in addition to being a physician at Medcan, is a mother of two young children herself, it's really a conversation about mothering amid the pandemic. So rather than my commentary describing what that's like, we sought out some moms to find out how they're doing. Their unvarnished responses are featured throughout the episode.

Mom 1: I'm a mother of three. My kids are eight, 11 and 12. My toughest moment as a mother this past year was right when it all began—immediately before the lockdown was imposed—my husband checked into a treatment facility. I'm talking right before. Like, two days before the country locked down. He remained there for seven weeks, and I didn't even know if we would still be a family once he returned. These were the darkest days of all of our lives. We were alone, day in, day out. Just us. Online school hadn't even begun, and once it did, it was a complete, chaotic, unorganized disaster, which proved to be so much more stressful than it was worth. This is a period of time that I never want to remember, but will never be able to forget.

Christopher Shulgan: Now for our interview with Michaeleen Doucleff. Doucleff is an award-winning NPR reporter and a mom with a young daughter. "Never before had I been so bad at something that I wanted to be good at," she writes. Dissatisfied with most parenting books, she sets off to explore how parenting is done in three different cultures, spending time with Mayan families in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, Inuit families in Nunavut and Hadzabe families in Tanzania.

Christopher Shulgan: Then the pandemic hit, and Doucleff had to figure out how to put everything she'd researched about mothering into practice. In this episode, Doucleff is in conversation with Medcan's Dr. Daiva Barnicke, a family physician, as well as an adjunct clinical professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. She's also a certified menopause practitioner. Here's Dr. Daiva Barnicke in conversation with Michaeleen Doucleff.

Daiva Barnicke: Well, welcome to Eat Move Think. My name is Dr. Daiva Barnicke, and I'm the guest host for this episode, and my guest today is Michaeleen Doucleff, author of the book Hunt, Gather, Parent, and an award-winning NPR journalist. Welcome, Michaeleen, and where are you joining us from today?

Michaeleen Doucleff: I'm in San Francisco, California. And thank you so much for having me.

Daiva Barnicke: Well, I'm truly honoured to be speaking with you today about your book, Hunt, Gather, Parent. It is an essential read. This is the parenting book that I've been waiting for. I've read books about what parents are doing wrong in society in regards to micromanaging our kids, overparenting, praise, helicopter parenting. And as a result, kids have had fewer skills, higher rates of anxiety, depression, less executive function. However, in your book, you talk about how we get it right. And so much of what we've learned is sinespace, it's just not working for a lot of parents. And so your book offers a total reset. So I think it's so timely that we're talking about parenting now, when the experience of mothering has changed so much this past year. You set out to write this book, having no idea that it would be released in the middle of a pandemic. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Michaeleen Doucleff: Yeah, for sure. I actually was in the middle of writing it when the lockdown here in San Francisco came and, you know, like a lot of mom and dads around North America, we lost all of our childcare, like, in an instant. And actually, my husband's father got sick, and he had to go leave to be with him. And it ended up being me and my little girl who was four at the time, really locked down in this little condo. And it was pretty brutal at the beginning, I have to say. You know, I had to finish the book, I had a deadline. And we had lost also our friendship network I talk about in the book. You know, this auntie-uncle network where we depend a lot on a few close friends to share childcare and, meet up a lot and be together a lot. And we lost them as well, right?

Michaeleen Doucleff: So it was just, like, me and Rosie in a little condo together. And what I ended up having to do after a couple days, I was like, "You know what? I'm gonna have to, like, implement the stuff in the book, like, tenfold, because I was doing a lot that was in the book, but I really wasn't—I don't know, embracing it with, like, my full heart or something, I don't know. Because I was just like, you know what? I'm gonna have to double down, because I was taking care of Rosie—she was going to preschool, so I was taking care of her, you know, maybe three or four hours a day on the weekdays. But that turned into, like, 14 hours a day. And so I really started to do, especially some of this stuff in the back towards the end, when it comes to giving children more autonomy, interfering less. You know, I really started to put those ideas into practice throughout the entire day. And I have to tell you that it saved us. It saved me and Rosie mentally, and it also saved me because it allowed me to work and finish writing the book. They were a lifesaver by every stretch of imagination.

Daiva Barnicke: So maybe let's go back a few years. So you've been to Africa. You were in a pandemic, the Ebola outbreak. You've seen firsthand what it's like to parent in a pandemic, can you talk to that, and what your experience was?

Michaeleen Doucleff: Yes. So in 2014, I was sent to Monrovia, Liberia, during the peak of the Ebola outbreak there as a reporter at NPR covering it. And we actually went into the area, a very rural area. We had to take this helicopter into this very rural area where the Ebola outbreak began. And actually, this trip was when I really started to reconsider our parenting a bit, because I saw these parents that were in this incredibly stressful situation, right? You've got Ebola spreading throughout these communities. It's a very silent—it's a very nefarious—I think it's much scarier in many ways than COVID just because the death rate and it's a horrible death.

Daiva Barnicke: Yeah.

Michaeleen Doucleff: And yet they were very calm and composed. And I'm not kidding you. Like, there was just this composure to them. And then I looked at how it was being portrayed in the media, and how scared some people were here. And I was just really struck by, like, again, being faced with something that's harsh and hard, and reacting in a way that's not so emotional, and not so kind of over the top, and just keeping their composure with their children and their families. You know, I actually met this grandfather who had Ebola, and he survived it. He had to go into one of the wards. And then his granddaughter got it, and he actually went back in and stayed with her and took care of her. And it was—I don't know, I just started to think that maybe there's a different way of doing things that's a little bit more productive and less exhaustive than what we're doing. And it really did begin during that trip.

Daiva Barnicke: So can you tell us about what was going on in your life as a parent that caused you to want to write the book?

Michaeleen Doucleff: Yeah, I—actually, it's funny. I didn't want to write this book. Because I felt like I was not a very good parent at all. Yeah, when Rosie was about two, two and a half, she started having, like, a lot of tantrums. And my husband and I really didn't know what to do with them. I read so many books, and I read so many blogs, and like you said, this kind of science-based research on it. And nothing was improving the situation. We just were in this kind of constant power struggle and deadlock. And she got to the point where I would try to help her, I would pick her up or I would console her, and she would just, like, slap me across the face.

Michaeleen Doucleff: And around the same time, I got sent by NPR to the Yucatan to do a story actually about kids' attention and how Mayan kids pay attention better than American kids in some situations. But while I was down there, I was completely blown away by the moms, in particular, this one mom, Maria Tun Burgos, the way that she interacts with her kids was just so different than what I was doing. She's very calm, and yet confident. She's clearly in charge. And there was no arguing, bickering, even negotiating with her three daughters. And yet, they were incredible. They were kind and generous, and super, super helpful.

Michaeleen Doucleff: So one morning, the girls were on their spring break, and the 12 year old woke up a little late, she had been staying up watching a movie. And she walked past me and her mom in the kitchen, and she just started washing the dishes voluntarily. And, you know, I was really surprised. I was like, "Wow, does she do that often?" And Maria wasn't really in awe. She was like, "You know, she's 12. And she knows what needs to be done. And so she sees it, and she does it." And I was just like, "Wow. Like, you know, here I am, I can't even get my kid to, like, stop slapping me across the face." And Maria just seemed to be incredibly skilled at mothering, at parenting. And I left there really wanting to learn more, but I could find very little about what Mayan parents are doing in popular parenting books. And I could find actually a lot in academic research. There's actually been a lot of research done on Indigenous families in Mexico.

Michaeleen Doucleff: But six months passed, and NPR kind of sent me back on another trip up to the Arctic, to Iqaluit, Canada. And I started to see a similar approach to parenting, where you have this very calm, confident parent, raising kind, generous kids. And then I started to really think, "Oh, something's going on here," right? You have these very different cultures that are separated in time and space, and yet they have these common themes to parenting. And so I started reading more about it. And I realized, oh, this is actually a really common way of interacting with children that parents all over the world have turned to for thousands of years. And I started to think, you know, maybe somehow we've kind of gone off course. And I want to learn this other way that seems to be really tried and true, and seems to be not based on control, but based on collaborating with children.

Michaeleen Doucleff: So, you know, I kind of thought of myself as this pretty laissez-faire, hands-off parent, compared to a lot of what I see and read about. And what I saw with the families there just made me realize I am by no means hands off. Like, I am a bossy, bossy pants is what I call myself. Because compared to so many parents around the world, I am constantly telling Rosie what to do. While we were in Tanzania, I actually kind of tracked how often parents talk to children, like, how often they give them commands, instructions, feedback, like praise or criticism. And it was like, one, two, maybe three times an hour. Like, it was incredibly a small amount. And there's another study that came out a few months ago with a different hunter-gatherer group that found a similar number. And I ran this experiment with me, and I thought I was hands off and not a helicopter parent, but I was clocking at, like, 60 an hour. Like, it was—because I feel like we are constantly giving children instructions, whether we realize it or not, we are constantly either commanding them to do something, not to do something, giving them feedback, giving them praise.

Michaeleen Doucleff: And I think that one, this is, like, exhausting. You cannot parent this way and also get work done and do it, you know, 12-13 hours a day. But second, I think, like you say, it does our children a disservice, because they end up overstimulated. I think they feel stress and anxiety because they don't feel like they have choices and autonomy, they're not making their own decisions. I argue in the book, it's just not the way human children evolved to interact with their parents in any way.

Mom 2: I'm a mother of two, a seven-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl. And this pandemic, as a mother has changed my relationship with my children, for sure. For the better in some ways, for the worse in some ways, because I'm the primary caregiver, and it's just me all day long. So it can get frustrating, of course, for them and me. I think we just get sick of each other. For the better in some ways as well for them, because my two children, they hang out all the time now. They have themselves to play with really pretty much, and their relationship is growing stronger. But also they seem to be more dependent on each other as well. One of the things that really surprised me actually, is the resilience of the kids. You know, everybody's down, everybody's depressed. So the biggest surprise to me as a mother has been to see really how resilient the kids are, and they seem to find happiness in these strange times. Yep, that's about it.

Mom 3: I'm a mother of two children, boys ages 10 and 14. As a mother, the pandemic has changed my relationship with my children for the better. I think we are spending more quality time together one on one, rather than just rushing to and fro to all these extracurricular activities we had and pursuing separate interests. Now we go for a walk together one on one, and then we're also doing things as a family like cooking dinner, and finding a show that we all want to watch together. My toughest moment of this past year was actually when things first shut down in the spring of 2020. The kids went from being at school every day and seeing friends at sports, to being alone, and I really saw them start to emotionally withdraw, and become sort of a shell of their former self. They weren't enjoying anything, and it was difficult. And we had to have a lot of one-on-one conversations and support and love, and we kind of had to let that school stuff slide a bit.

Daiva Barnicke: You describe the Mayan kids as the most helpful kids in the world. Now what did the Maya method teach you in your parenting with Rosie? I think we all want to know this one.

Michaeleen Doucleff: Yes, this is like the gateway into the book.

Daiva Barnicke: Everyone wants the most helpful kids in the world.

Michaeleen Doucleff: You know, it's really interesting. I talk about three things in the book that the Maya and that have been documented by a whole bunch of wonderful researchers—Lucia Alcala at Fullerton has kind of led the way. But the first thing is that they get children involved in household work. So anything that a parent wants a child to do as they get older, and do easily without nagging or bribing or allowance, punishment, a parent needs to get that child involved in that task. And I say in the book, the earlier you do it, the easier it is. But it's by no means too late. That's another very western thing we think of with parenting, that, like, windows of opportunity close, and then it's too late.

Michaeleen Doucleff: There's all this research that shows little toddlers—18 months—are incredibly helpful. And they will do all these different helpful tasks. They'll pick up something somebody drops, they'll move a piece of furniture out of the way, so the person can get by. And they do all this stuff voluntarily. Evolutionary biologists think it's one of the reasons why we have been so successful is that we are genuinely born helpful, and we need to be helpful and help the people that love us. That's what brings us joy and makes us feel good and have good mental health. So you can repattern this at any age. And I make the joke—but it's not really a joke—is that I use the method on my husband. Because what I realized while writing the book and trying the techniques with Rosie, who was three and four at the time, was that, we're talking about helpfulness in the way that you voluntarily do it, right? So not helpfulness in the way that, like, you're forced, or you have to nag, but the child jumps up and says, "What can I do to help?" Or just jumps in and starts helping.

Michaeleen Doucleff: And what I realized was that my husband and I weren't doing that. Like, we were nagging and thought, you know, who did the dishes yesterday, and he'd asked me to do something, and I would roll my eyes, or, you know, we were not being—like I say in the book, acomedido, which is like, this accommodating to each other, and genuinely helpful with each other. And so what I realized, I was like, okay, we're gonna have to train the whole family. We're gonna have to, like, teach the whole family to be cooperative. And so I really did use the same approach on him—and myself, I will say, because I wasn't being cooperative with him either—to get us to learn to be helpful with each other. And so that's why I say it. He's 44, and we've been married 20 years. So if we can change, like, anybody can change. And a nine year old, for sure, or a 16 year old is easy peasy. There is a flame inside their heart that wants to help, you just have to kind of fan it.

Michaeleen Doucleff: So the key thing really is to get the kids involved. And so that's done in several ways. First of all, you have to make time for it, you know? You have to make it a priority in your life. If the child is never at home while you're doing the chores, you know, they're always at some other activity, or they're watching TV, they're never gonna learn the skill, and they're never gonna learn to be cooperative with you, you know? They're in their individual activity. So what I did was I just got rid of all, like, what I call in the book and what psychologists call child-centred activities. So activities that are made just for Rosie, things that I would never do if I wasn't a parent. So, like, four-year-old birthday parties, kiddie museums, even, like, trips to the zoo, things that, like, I just don't want to do, and I was only really doing for her. These things erode a child's motivation to help. They teach the child that they are special, and that their role in the family is to do these special activities. And so I just got rid of them. I was just like, "We are not doing them. We are gonna do the way most adults all around the world do." And that's I'm gonna go about my life on the weekends and the evenings, And I'm gonna welcome Rosie into that world. And I'm gonna say, "You can come with me, you have to behave a certain way." I'm gonna help teach her how to behave. But you're part of my world. And what this does, is it teaches the child to be part of your team, to cooperate with you, you're working together. When you go out the door in the morning to go to school eventually, or into work, the child comes with you because they always have.

Daiva Barnicke: Right. I can absolutely relate. We plan our weekends around our kids. I have two children, and we certainly either play in the park or go into the cottage or pool or whatever it might be. All around the activities, eating schedule, their naps. And so, you know, I guess I wonder how do we start the action? What do you do?

Michaeleen Doucleff: Yeah. How old are they?

Daiva Barnicke: I have a two and a half and a four and a half year old.

Michaeleen Doucleff: Okay. Oh, they're super young.

Daiva Barnicke: Yeah, yeah. We're just at the beginning of the repatterning.

Michaeleen Doucleff: Yeah, it'll be quick. I think it will take like a couple of months, and it'll be, like, all turned around. That's the other thing, is we think things are kind of instantaneous. It's interesting. We think that it takes time for children to learn to read and do math, we accept that very well. And in a lot of cultures, parents also believe that about these other things, like becoming helpful, or emotional regulation. That they take time, and they take kind of a constant, gentle guidance and step-by-step approach. So I would say, just stop doing things you don't want to do. Like, if you want to go to the pool—I actually love going to the pool. For me, it's fantastic. I take Rosie to the pool, and I sit there and read or work in the sun. And I think it's really about doing things that you want to do. I think there's also a little bit of a mindset change. So we often think that children need to be entertained, and it's our job to, like—and I use "entertainment" kind of broadly in the scope of also including, like, instruction and learning. We need to occupy their time and keep them busy in some way.

Daiva Barnicke: Yeah, exactly.

Michaeleen Doucleff: Yeah. And that no other culture in the world believes this. And this is definitely not the way children evolved to be treated. There's no way on this planet. I think for 200,000-300,000 years, human children have not been kept busy by their parents. So they are made to do that on their own. And there might be some resistance at first, especially with two and four, it will go away quickly. So get rid of that mindset. Like, that just is, like, it's a really hard one to do. Even now sometimes I'm like, you know, how do I keep her busy? But it's doing them a disservice, because life is not kiddie birthday parties and, you know, special events and entertainment. A lot of life is boring and hard work. And being able to occupy yourself, but also take initiative.

Michaeleen Doucleff: And I think that that's what we're taking away from them when we constantly organize their schedule and move them around from place to place and give them constant entertainment. And this has been documented with psychological studies, is that children don't learn to take initiative. They don't learn to do their homework without being asked. They don't learn to help without being asked, because that's a skill, right? To be able to sit down and say, "What needs to be done right now?" And if they don't have the opportunities to practice that skill, they're not gonna learn it, or it'll be much harder. So I would say, get rid of anything that you don't want to do, and start thinking, "Well, what do I want to do? And how can I include those kids in that?" And that's where the time will take, right? Because you have to modify things a little bit. Like, one of the things is we really enjoyed hiking, and we couldn't just go out on, like, a six-mile hike. When she was a baby we could, because we'd just carry on. But, you know, as a toddler, we couldn't just go out on a six-mile hike. We had to, like, gradually build up distance with her and modify things some, but then start including them in your life. Instead of having the activity be something specific for them, have the activity on Saturday—like, this is what we do is we all make breakfast together. And then we all clean the house together, and we all do the laundry.

Daiva Barnicke: That sounds like a dream.

Michaeleen Doucleff: Those are the activities, you know? I mean, that's what most families in the world, that's what they do, right? And that's how it used to be in the West as well.

Daiva Barnicke: Yeah.

Michaeleen Doucleff: And then get the children involved. This is kind of the second part is, like, you call them over. "Come over and help me with this." And you give them tiny, tiny tasks to do. So not like, "Okay, fold your clothes," but, like, "Here, put this in the drawer." Or, "Fold this one shirt." So very, very small tasks that they can do quickly and contribute—real tasks. And you just keep doing this over and over again. And before you know it, they'll be cooking you breakfast. Rosie's almost cooking me breakfast. She tries every now and then.

Mom 4: I'm a mother of two children, ages four and six. And as a mother, the pandemic has changed my relationship with my children for the better, because I get to see them grow and change especially at their age, and see how adaptive and resilient they are during these crazy times. We don't have a lot of distractions, because it really is just us in this big world most of the time now. I also think they understand us more, too, that yes, Mom and Dad need "me time." And they also do feel like crying once in a while.

Mom 5: I'm the mom of two boys aged nine and 11, and the biggest surprise to me this year was the realization of how important it is to miss your kids. We live in a really small space, so when we're together all day every day, we quickly get on each other's nerves. This would make me feel so guilty as a mom because I couldn't understand why I hated spending so much time with my kids. But once they were back in school and we each had our own lives, it would be so great to get together at the end of the day and share stories and just be together. So I realized that to really appreciate the people you love, you actually have to miss them.

Daiva Barnicke: So, you know, going back to Mexico and your experience there, what has the experience meeting mothers in Mexico taught you about being a mother?

Michaeleen Doucleff: I think the first thing which just ,like, hit me in the face, the first time I went there was one, that I'm way too high energy, way too high energy. And just, like, that Rosie was really mirroring my energy state. And a lot of times it was positive high energy, you can tell I'm a high-energy person. But that's not what she needed. She needed somebody that wasn't talking all the time, that was calm, that wasn't telling her much to do. And once I started being that around her, you know, even just day to day, even in the car, like, we would start having—like, if I felt like tension or struggles, power struggles were coming, I would just say, "Let's have a 10-minute quiet time. And let's just not talk." And at first she would keep talking, but I would just be quiet. And we've worked our way up to, like, hours we can go now without talking to each other, which is incredible, right? But it would—just if I calmed myself down, it just had this, like, magic effect on her where she just—and then both of us would just kind of calm down. And so the moms in the Yucatan really showed me that. That, like, the parent's job is to kind of stand in the background, go about your own business, and kind of watch your children with a keen eye to make sure they're okay, make sure that they're safe. But really, it's not your job to interfere, you know, one, two, three times an hour maybe, right? Which is nothing.

Daiva Barnicke: Right. So how do you view the behaviour of children now and your relationship to your kids in a way that you didn't maybe grasp before?

Michaeleen Doucleff: So, you know, I think growing up in an angry home, I think I often thought of Rosie's motivations as kind of nefarious. So, like, I mean, clearly when she was hitting me and having a tantrum or what I thought of as, like, pushing my buttons, I often interpreted her motivation as kind of anti-social is what psychologists would say, right? Like, she was trying to hurt me somehow. I think the way we talk about children, this is a common view, right? We say they're pushing our buttons, they're manipulating us, they're pushing boundaries. We view their behaviour in this really kind of negative way. And I think that that, in turn, makes us act negative towards them, right? And makes us angry at them. And so what I learned, especially from the parents in the Arctic, was that we don't know that children are manipulating us. We have no clue that they're intentionally trying to hurt us, right? There's no data showing that.

Daiva Barnicke: Right.

Michaeleen Doucleff: And so it's kind of a cultural construction, this idea. And what if we just, like, throw that out the window, and what if we thought of children in a way that actually generates less anger towards them? And one of the moms actually in Iqaluit said—I said to her, "Isn't Rosie pushing my buttons? Isn't she manipulating me?" And she, like, laughed at me. She was like, "No, she's not. She's two years old." And so a lot of the parents up there and the elders told me, that kids are just these irrational, illogical beings that don't have emotional regulation and don't really have social skills, and it's the job of the parent to show them the proper behaviour. And this does two things. Number one, like, it allowed me to not be so angry at Rosie. So if she's, like, having a tantrum, or she hits me, if I say, like, "Well, she just doesn't understand yet. She just doesn't know. She doesn't know how that hurts me, and it's my job to teach her," then I'm much less likely to get angry at her and feel frustrated with her. Because it's not personal, right?

Daiva Barnicke: Yeah, of course.

Michaeleen Doucleff: And then the second thing is that it's my job to teach her how to behave. So if it's my job to teach her how to behave, if I yell at her and get angry at her back, what am I teaching her, right? To get angry, right? And yell, right?

Daiva Barnicke: Yeah, yeah. And we see it as they're trying to be intentional about their actions, but it's actually quite unintentional.

Michaeleen Doucleff: Exactly. Exactly. Especially when she was two. Like, she had no clue how much it hurt me when she hit me. I even asked her one day. I was like, "Do you not like me?" And she was like, "No, Mama, I like you." And I was like, "Well, when you hit me, it makes me think that you don't like me." And she was like, "Oh, I love you, mom!" You know? Yeah, exactly. There's not an intentionality. And so for me, it was less about suppressing anger for her. You know, if the anger rose then suppressing it, and more about viewing her in a way and her motivations in a way that generated less anger in me.

Daiva Barnicke: So what advice would you give to parents of children who are having struggles parenting at any age?

Michaeleen Doucleff: I always say the big thing that changed for me was, like I said, viewing Rosie a little bit more pro-socially. You know, like, viewing her actions as not nefarious, and that she actually genuinely loves me. I mean, I'm almost everything to her, me and her father, you know? But also just, I stopped arguing with her, and negotiating. Like, I just completely stopped. Like, many parents around the world never argue with children. Like, one of the moms in the Arctic told me like, "Well, when I was, like, nine, my uncle argued with me once. And everyone made fun of him, because he was arguing with a kid." So this is a 40-45 year old woman who one adult argued with her entire childhood. So I just stopped. I just, like, you know, if an argument is starting or negotiating is starting, I just kind of put my hand on her shoulder, and I'm like, "I'm not gonna argue with you," and I walk away. Like, nothing is worth it. And I think you take away all your power and authority with children. I was just reading this incredible book called Fast-Forward Family. I don't know if you guys have seen it. It's by Elinor Ochs at UCLA. And she documents the conversations that parents have with children in middle class, white families in Los Angeles. And they're incredible. Like, there's these, like, 10-minute conversations about who's gonna tie the shoes, you know?

Daiva Barnicke: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's probably my household.

Michaeleen Doucleff: And that's why I think it's even more important to kind of reconsider what we're doing. So one of the things a psychologist told me is that, you know, in the US and in Canada, parents teach kids to figure out what they want in life and go get it, right? And it's just kind of this very—and sometimes it's what the parents want, right?

Daiva Barnicke: Yeah.

Michaeleen Doucleff: Very narrow kind of view of a successful path in life. And I think that that's good. I think it's good to, you know, have these long-term goals. But I think we've done that at the expense of teaching children to be helpful, teaching children to be cooperative and kind and work together, and be a good family member. And that's really what we needed during this pandemic, right? Is kids to be on the team with their parents and help. Like I said in one of the pieces I wrote, moms have way too much on their shoulder. It's time that the kids give to the mom and help the mom. And in that process, the child learns all these skills, both physically how to do things, but also emotionally how to connect and bond with their parent in a way that they hadn't before.

Daiva Barnicke: Well, thank you. Your book, Hunt, Gather, Parent has provided parents a lot of wisdom on parenting and culture. It's been deeply researched with personal narrative and is quite compelling. Thank you for sharing your story and your insights.

Michaeleen Doucleff: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's really been a pleasure.

Mom 6: I am a mother of a 14-year-old teenage son. As a mother, the pandemic has changed my relationship with my son, I'm going to say for the better because as we're all home and can't really go out as much, it's really forced us to spend a lot of time together that maybe we wouldn't have before the pandemic. You know, he would be out and about with his friends. And now, you know, he doesn't mind sitting down and watching Riverdale or we'll find a new show on Disney+ to watch together on a weekly basis. And you know, he's in high school, so this is a time where he would more than likely break away and spend more time with his peers than his parents. But I feel like the pandemic is making us closer. So I am very appreciative of that.

Christopher Shulgan: That was Medcan guest host and family physician Dr. Daiva Barnicke talking with the New York Times-bestselling author Michaeleen Doucleff about being a mother in the pandemic, and her new book, Hunt, Gather, Parent. Find Doucleff on Twitter @foodiescience. Thanks to all of the moms who contributed their snapshots of motherhood during a global pandemic.

Christopher Shulgan: I'm executive producer Christopher Shulgan. Find show notes, links and full episode transcripts at EatMoveThinkpodcast.com.

Christopher Shulgan: Eat Move Think is produced by Ghost Bureau. This episode was produced by mom Chantel Guertin, who has her own snapshot of motherhood.

Chantel Guertin: I'm not sure this is what any of us signed up for.

Christopher Shulgan: Senior producer is Russell Gragg. Social media support from Emily Mannella.

Christopher Shulgan: Remember to rate and subscribe to Eat Move Think on your favourite podcast platform. Follow our host Shaun Francis on Twitter and Instagram @Shauncfrancis—that's Shaun with a U—and Medcan @medcanlivewell. We'll be back soon with a new episode examining the latest in health and wellness.