That realization came recently when I came across a study released from the Brigham Young University Department of Family Life, located in Provo, Utah, which examined the role grandparents play in the development of children. The research by Professors Jeremy Yorgason and Laura Padilla-Walker (aided by student Jami Jackson) shows grandparents have an effect on children’s social behaviors. The research was published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence, using data collected from the Flourishing Families Project — an ongoing study from the past five years that involves 500 families from the northwest area of the U.S. and includes information on individuals from all different races and backgrounds. To look at the influence of grandparents, 408 grandchildren ages 10-14 were interviewed about their relationship with their grandparents. A year later, those grandchildren were contacted again to assess their emotional development. A summary of the study states:

“It indicates when grandparents are involved in their grandchildren’s daily lives, the children are more social and more involved in school. They are also more likely to show care and compassion for people outside their immediate circle of friends and family.This relationship is stronger in single-parent households and is also stronger in situations where the grandparents do not live with the child.”

The researchers believe that one possible reason for this correlation is that having regular contact with an adult outside of immediate family develops pro-social skills – a measure of how much kids are able to think outside themselves - essential for social development. Frequent contact with an adult other than a child’s immediate family helps adolescents to develop key emotional skills that are fundamental to positive social development. Another reason could be because nonresidential grandparents are less likely to take on a parent-like role, so they are more likely to focus their efforts on fostering positive development, rather than discipline.

Our kids have grandparents who live within a half hours drive from them. However, the distance doesn’t have to be a deciding factor in this relationship. Although the study didn’t look at distance between grandparents and grandchildren, Yorgason said that even grandparents living far away can have a positive influence.

Image source:  Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Will I let my kids walk to school alone? Highly unlikely. We live in a small town where the statistics show that there is no violent crime. Yet I know that I will not be able to be ‘reasonable’ and make a fact-based decision when it comes to the safety of my kids.

As parents we all make decisions that are not based on statistical evidence. Regardless of what the research and evidence tells us most of us will be over protective. In this we are influenced by what has been described as the Availability Heuristic – a type of decision bias highlighted in the works of Daniel Kahnemann and Amos Tversky as the tendency to judge the importance or frequency of an event based on how easily the event is brought to mind. For example, if we hear constantly about a certain type of danger (such as abduction while walking to school on their own) to our children in the news we will begin to believe that it’s a frequently occurring event. It is in the interest of news organization to sensationalize such events, no matter how infrequent they are. The facts usually contradict our beliefs, but there’s nothing we can do about it when making decisions about the safety of our kids.

The observation about the availability bias and its connection to parenting was made recently by Sam McNerney, author of the Why We Reason blog, in his recent blog post. He writes “Can you really criticize overprotective parents? They are, after all, only trying to ensure the safety of their children. But sometimes the numbers tell a different story. “ Here are some factoids from the post:

• Only about 100 people are abducted by a stranger every year, half of whom are eventually murdered. Factoring in that there are 50 million children in the United States, the annual homicide rate via abduction comes out to be one in a million. In other words, “if you wanted your child to be kidnapped and held overnight by a stranger, you’d have to leave the child outside and unattended for 750,000 years.
• More than twice as many children are hit by cars driven by parents taking their children to school as by other kinds of traffic. That is, every time a parent drives their children to school the chances that a child gets killed increases.
• After the 9-11 attacks, 1,500 people died in car accidents because they chose to drive fearing that their plane might be hijacked. Add that up over the course of a few years and you’ll find that “the number of people who died by avoiding air travels was six times the number of people who died in the airplanes on September 11.
• You are eight times more likely to die from walking home drunk than driving home drunk.
• The chances of getting murdered from hitchhiking is virtually zero.
• Owning a pool is astronomically more dangerous that owning a gun.

So, check out the rest of McNerney’s blog post although I doubt this information will do anything to change your parenting style. As a side note, I just started reading Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahnemann’s Thinking Fast and Slow. In my opinion a must read for anyone interested in decision sciences, analytics, and decision management.

Image Source: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In 

1.  Threaten to leave your kids behind.
2. Lie to your child.
3. Ignore your own bad behavior.
4. Assume that what worked for your first – or for you – will work for your second.
5. Have a panic attack because your child broke a rule.
6. Think your baby shouldn’t be babied (and related Push your child to gain independence: the earlier, the better).
7. Punish or scold your child when she acts out, hits, or throws things.
8. Try to be your child’s friend rather than his parent.
9. Fill your cupboards with junk food and skip family meals.
10. Don’t walk; drive everywhere.
11. Think you bear sole responsibility – or NO responsibility – for your child’s development.
12. Assume there is one way to be a good parent.

How many of these have you done? I’m certainly guilty of at least a couple of the listed ways of misguided parenting. The researchers quoted in the article bring up some good examples for each of the listed items. Most of this advice seems obvious, but as it often happens, without explicit acknowledgment of such behavior, it’s unlikely to change. So, I encourage you to read the full article. It has already helped me be more aware of how I interact with my kids in certain situations.

Image Source: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net