Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive - 139: How to keep your child safe from guns (even if you don’t own one)

139: How to keep your child safe from guns (even if you don’t own one)

06/20/21 • 44 min

Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive

Many of us haven't been in each other's homes for a while now, but pretty soon we'll be getting together inside again. And our children will be heading inside, in their friends' houses. People store guns inside. Are you certain that nobody owns a gun in any of the places your child plays? If they do own a gun, are you certain they store it safely? If not, you need to ask. That's one issue we discuss in this interview with Dr. Nina Agrawal, a board-certified pediatrician who has expertise in violence against children. She co-founded the Gun Safety Committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics in New York State, and is leading the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force for the American Medical Women’s Association. Another issue is the gun violence that is primarily faced by children of color, which turns out to affect a far greater number of children. And how is this all linked to the Peloton recall? You'll have to listen in to find out... Jump to highlights here:

(01:00) Indoor playdates are ramping up...will your child be safe?
(02:29) Introducing Dr. Nina Agrawal, pediatrician and co-founder of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Gun Safety Committee in New York State
(02:58) Understanding how big is the scope of gun violence against children
(06:15) The Dickey Amendment: Explaining the massive lack of data and research on gun violence and safety
(11:24) The ways that gun violence affects children that we might not expect
(12:32) “I get woken up at night to the sound of gunshots.”
(17:09) The racial disparity in how children are affected by gun violence
(20:46) More people purchased guns in 2020, and there are more first-time owners too
(23:39) The statistical likelihood of children coming to harm if they live with a firearm in their household
(27:00) Just telling kids not to touch guns doesn't work (even if you think of your child as one who is 'sensible,' and you've talked with them about gun safety)
(30:45) The Asking Saves Kids Campaign helps to keep kids safer
(33:06) The surprising link between children involved in gun violence and the Peloton treadmill recall
(36:07) In American culture, banning all guns can't be the answer
(40:52) Effective Child Access Laws
(41:45) How to create safer environments for children through building communities

[accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan 00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Jen Lumanlan 00:06 We all want her children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research on principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a free guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won't Listen To You & What To Do About Each One, just head over to YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us. Jen Lumanlan 01:00 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. And today we're going to discuss a topic that I think is about to come into parents' consciousness in a way that it really hasn't as much over the last year. And for some of us, that's a result of our privilege. And I was reflecting that as vaccinations for children become more available, we're probably going to start moving towards indoor play dates without parents being around because when my daughter went into when we went into sort of lockdown, she was young enough that she wasn't really doing playdates indoors with other people in anyone else's houses. And so I never really felt as though I needed to ask, "Are there guns in your house?" because I was always there to supervise. And so of course, over the last year, she's played with a lot of kids on our street, and they're always outside and I can always hear them. And so the danger doesn't seem to be there in the same way for me in those outdoor playdates scenarios. But of course, as vaccinations become available, and these things start to move inside, I don't know which of my friends has guns in their houses. And if I'm kind of uncomfortable asking about this, I'm guessing that a lot of parents haven't even thought about it and don't have it on their collective radar yet. So I wanted to bring that up into our consciousness before we actually need it. And then, of course, there's another issue here as well, that we're going to delve...

(01:00) Indoor playdates are ramping up...will your child be safe?
(02:29) Introducing Dr. Nina Agrawal, pediatrician and co-founder of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Gun Safety Committee in New York State
(02:58) Understanding how big is the scope of gun violence against children
(06:15) The Dickey Amendment: Explaining the massive lack of data and research on gun violence and safety
(11:24) The ways that gun violence affects children that we might not expect
(12:32) “I get woken up at night to the sound of gunshots.”
(17:09) The racial disparity in how children are affected by gun violence
(20:46) More people purchased guns in 2020, and there are more first-time owners too
(23:39) The statistical likelihood of children coming to harm if they live with a firearm in their household
(27:00) Just telling kids not to touch guns doesn't work (even if you think of your child as one who is 'sensible,' and you've talked with them about gun safety)
(30:45) The Asking Saves Kids Campaign helps to keep kids safer
(33:06) The surprising link between children involved in gun violence and the Peloton treadmill recall
(36:07) In American culture, banning all guns can't be the answer
(40:52) Effective Child Access Laws
(41:45) How to create safer environments for children through building communities

Previous Episode

138: Most of what you know about attachment is probably wrong

New parents often worry about attachment to their baby - will I be able to build it? My baby cries a lot - does that mean that we aren't attached? If I put my baby in daycare, will they get attached to the daycare staff rather than to me? Based on the ideas about attachment that have been circulated over the years, these are entirely valid concerns. But it turns out that not only should we not worry about these things, but the the research that these ideas were based in was highly flawed. It's often forgotten that attachment theory was developed in the period after World War II, when policymakers were trying to get women out of the jobs they had held during the war, and back into their 'natural' place in the home. In one of his earliest papers Dr. John Bowlby - the so-called Father of Attachment Theory - described 44 children who had been referred to his clinic for stealing, and compared these with children who had not stolen anything. He reported that the thieves had been separated from their parents during childhood, which led them to have a low sense of self-worth and capacity for empathy. He went on to say that “to deprive a small child of his mother’s companionship is as bad as depriving him of vitamins.” But much later in his life, Bowlby revealed that he had conflated a whole lot of kinds of separation into that one category – everything between sleeping in a different room to being abandoned in an orphanage. And in addition to being separated, many of the thieves had also experienced physical or sexual abuse. The fear that spending time apart from your baby will damage them in some way is just not supported by the evidence. What other common beliefs do we hold about attachment relationships that aren't supported by evidence? Well, quite a lot, as it turns out! Listen in for more. Check this episode for more attachment research: What it is, what it’s not, how to do it, and how to stop stressing about it Link to the book mentioned:

Cornerstones of Attachment Research (Affiliate link).

Jump to highlights:

(03:30) Download the free Right From The Start Roadmap
(06:11) Dr. John Bowlby, who is known as the founder of attachment theory
(06:40) A brief overview of attachment theory
(08:06) What is attachment theory
(09:44) A closer look at the word attachment
(12:55) Five aspects out of Freud's psychoanalytic theory
(14:32) 44 Juvenile Thieves - One of the major ideas about separation from parents
(17:50) What is the word monotrophy
(18:49) The four dimensions that distinguish African-American views of motherhood from American views by Dr. Patricia Hill Collins
(20:49) Aka Pygmy tribe in Africa
(21:37) What is PIC or Parental Investment in the child Questionnaire by Dr. Robert Bradley
(24:19) The Strange Situation Procedure developed by Dr. Mary Ainsworth
(30:30) White middle class mothers in Baltimore stand for what attachment should look like in families of all types around the world
(33:36) Two main cross cultural studies
(40:13) The cognitive thinking component of the attachment relationship
(47:29) What is Outcomes
(01:01:25) Summary

[accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan 00:03 Hi, I’m Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research on principles of respectful parenting. If you’d like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a FREE Guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won’t listen To You and What To Do About Each One, just head on over to your YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you’ll join us. Jen Lumanlan 00:55 Hello, and welcome to the your parenting Mojo podcast. Today's episode is called most of what you know about attachment is probably wrong, and has been a long time in the making. I actually started looking at it for a course that I've developed with Hannah and Kelty of upbringing called right from the start. Of course, it's for people who are expecting a baby and or who have a child under one year of age and we really help you to find a path that feels right for you from the start. In the nine main course modules, you'll lear...

Next Episode

140: Mythbusting about fat and BMI with Dr. Lindo Bacon

This episode kicks off a series on the intersection of parenting and food. We begin today with a conversation with Dr. Lindo Bacon, where we bust a LOT of myths about the obesity epidemic that is said to be plaguing people in the United States and other countries that follow a similar diet. The messaging we get from government entities seems pretty simple: being fat is bad for you. It causes increased risk for a host of diseases as well as early death. If you're fat, you should lose weight because then your risk of getting these diseases and dying early will be reduced. But what if this wasn't true? What if this messaging had been established by people who own companies that manufacture weight loss products who sit on panels that advise international governmental entities like the World Health Organization? What if body fat was actually protective for your health? We dig into all these questions and more in this provocative interview. We'll continue this series with episodes looking specifically at sugar, as well as supporting parents who have or continue to struggle with disordered eating, and how to support children in developing eating habits that will serve them for a lifetime, not just get the vegetables into them today. Jump to highlights:

(01:00) Introducing Dr. Lindo Bacon and starting our series of episodes on the intersection of parenting and food
(02:22) Stripping the word ‘fat’ of it’s pejorative meaning and reclaiming the term while acknowledging that it may be jarring for some people
(03:09) Kicking off the conversation with how we measure health using BMI and how it might not be accurate
(05:03) The resistance to Katherine Flegal’s seminal research in weight and longevity
(05:49) The development of the Body Mass Index was with scientific bias to fit the bell curve
(07:30) Higher body weight does not necessarily mean a person has greater risk of poor health
(10:59) We actually know that the research is highly exaggerated in terms on the role that it plays on health
(13:16) Dr. Bacon’s turning point: When they found out that BMI recommendations were created by an organization funded by pharmaceutical companies who produce weight loss drugs and products
(17:35) Taking the issue one step further with the American Medical Association’s recommendation whether to categorize obesity as a disease or not
(19:19) The Obesity Paradox is an observation in the research that people who are obese who get the same diseases as those with ‘normal’ weight are living longer
(21:15) The concept of dieting just doesn’t work according to the data
(30:33) A story of Dr. Bacon’s and their father’s knee problems
(34:40) Individual factors only accounts to 25% to somebody’s total health outcomes and social determinants account to about 60%
(42:05) It is cool right now to be your authentic self but not everyone can so easily be their authentic self when their authentic selves are not valued by society at large
(45:48) Improving the health of individuals is more communal than individual

Resource Links:

Health at Every Size, by Lindo Bacon
Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, and Just Plain Fail to Understand about Weight, by Lindo Bacon and Lucy Aphramor
Radical Belonging: How to Survive and Thrive in an Unjust World (While Transforming it for the Better), by Lindo Bacon
Association For Size Diversity and Health

[accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan 00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want her children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. Jen Lumanlan 00:29 If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a free guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won't Listen...