🛝 This Week In Parenting · Storyflo

We’ve been watching the OG Little House on the Prairie show this summer. It came out in the 70s, but the stories are entertaining, slow-paced, and fodder for lots of good conversations…we have only one TV in our house (and don’t use iPads for videos or games other than on long road trips) so this has been a show we can all watch and enjoy.

(We did just see that Netflix has a reboot of the series that looks very cinematic, so everyone is excited to check that out)

Two interesting notes that I’ve been keeping from watching this show just in the past week.

**There was an episode where there was an outbreak of a disease called “mountain fever.”**It was really interesting to see how they portrayed the townspeople coming together to protect one another during this outbreak.

It happened in a neighboring town, and there were armed townsfolk at all the entrances of the town in order to keep people from coming in and protect outsiders while it ravaged the town. It was also really funny because Ma on the show started baking like a fiend while they were in their “quarantine”…

Lots of early-pandemic vibes.*Of note: “mountain fever” is actually being portrayed, at least in this episode, as Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, based on the symptoms and mortality rate. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is actually passed by ticks and is not spread human to human.*Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever actually has an extremely high mortality rate if untreated (treatment = antibiotics which they didn’t have then!)

(If I had been a show runner, I probably would have picked measles, although the mortality rate for measles isn’t so high that it makes for as dramatic of an illness to have in a tiny town)In the most recent episodes that we’ve watched,

the schoolhouse teacher consistently sends this little annoying AF student to the corner. He’s a snotty rich kid (parents own the general store…his sister is even worse), and we all laugh as a family because he gets sent to the corner basically for every comment.

You can just tell how much the teacher has no energy for Willie’s BS.

It actually reminds me of an influential Christian parenting writer/radio personality who still uses “the corner” as a main discipline strategy and tells people on his call on radio show that kids need more time in corners.

Not eating dinner? Go to the corner.

Not obeying right away? Go to the corner.

I’ve seen episodes where he tells them to stay in the corner for hours….in a corner!What they do in the corner I don’t know… but they certainly aren’t learning anything useful other than that their parents rely on advice that is lazy and ineffective.

I teachauthoritative parenting…no corners required and you actually see improvements in your child, your confidence as a parent, and your relationship.

And if you want help actually implementing authoritative parenting without reading a bunch of books…I made theauthoritative parenting study groupwhere you (and your partner) learn and implement authoritative approaches in just 5 minutes per day.

Substack is doing this new thing (very controversional) where you can see if an article is full of AI slop and I just wanted to share that amongst the typos and incomplete thoughts, they have determined only a human could write something like this article :-p

Perhaps you aren’t an Arrested Development fan and you don’t quite catch the “always leave a note” bit, but this is something that we have ingrained in our kids.

We have a busy household at times, and oftentimes the kids will make a request while we are in the midst of our busy day. We can’t always address that request at the moment, which is why we have sticky notes galore.

For executive functioning, I talk a lot about visual reminders, especially at the point of performance. Our kids have learned “if I put a note somewhere where it’s likely to be seen and acted on in that moment, then the likelihood of the thing that I need happening is much, much higher”

Do notes work for you and your kids? We find it’s a great way to put a pin in something that needs done but not at this very moment. It helps them move forward and us remember to complete it when the time is better.

I got to see a patient the other day in clinic that was a follow-up visit. When we saw them at their first visit, they definitely met criteria for ADHD but we don’t typically start on medications. For this child we decided to do some nutritional lab work to look at some executive functioning skills, work on sleep, work on nutrition, those sorts of things.

They came back, and one of the really interesting things was that we found that his iron was low, his ferritin was 7. We started him on some iron. The mom said, “Have you noticed anything different?” Two things the mom brought up right away, without me asking, were:

**His blankets and pillows aren’t all over the place in the morning.**Low ferritin level, even without having actual anemia, will cause more restless sleep. They roll around more, they’re all over the place, their pillows and blankets are askew, and they don’t get as good of rest. She mentioned that straight away. That felt really good that we gave him some iron and his sleep got better. His pillows and blankets weren’t such a mess.?**Stopped chewing ice.**This is not one that I typically ask about or warn parents about but she said he’s not asking for and chewing ice all the time. That is another one that goes along with iron deficiency.**There are actually two thoughts on the impact of chewing ice on iron deficiency:**Their tongue is a bit inflamed and swollen as a consequence of their iron deficiency, and so chewing ice soothes their swollen, inflamed tongue.

Ice provides a little bit more alertness, awareness, and arousal by activating the sympathetic tone. It’s novel; it’s sensory; it activates their senses and gives them a temporary boost in alertness, which helps offset the fact that their low iron levels are affecting their dopamine availability.

Dopamine synthesis requires iron, so children with low available iron, as evidenced by a serum ferritin usually below 30, will have lower dopamine tone in their brain. Chewing ice actually stimulates things enough that they can have a little bit of a temporary increase in their focus and alertness

Quick lab tests to check ferritin and a CBC is the answer here…it’s very easy, cheap, and ferritin is the best tool to assess available iron stores. You can have low iron levels without being anemic and experience a number of iron related symptoms

We do lab testing all the time for families, and we actually take insurance for these visits. We call it an ** ADHD tune-up**, and regardless if they’ve been diagnosed, regardless of their medications, what we do is we look at the whole child’s picture- everything from nutrition to sleep to screen time to parenting approaches to movement, and we put together a plan to help across the whole board for your child and for what they’re facing. You don’t need to be a patient in our practice to get an ADHD Tune-Up visit, and you can stay with your regular doctor for all your other care (and you don’t need a referral).

If you’re interested in an ADHD tune-up, especially before back to school, click the link below. Check out the information. We do take insurance for these visits, they can be virtual if you’re not local, and they’re actually a lot of fun to help the child understand what their brain is like and what it’s doing and help them to thrive with their unique brain wiring.

A lot of parents feel like they can spot ADHD easily…that it looks like the experience they had with children in their grade school classes who were nearly always very hyperactive.

Most ADHD though, is not that loud or easily apparent.

When most parents think about ADHD, they think about inattentive or hyperactive because those are where the evaluation forms and symptoms are most readily apparent and attributable.

Actually, there are four domains of ADHD:

Hyperactivity
Inattention
Emotional regulation
Executive functioning

Executive function and emotional regulation (and lack thereof) aren’t often focused on because it’s not as easy to pick out those specific skills and challenges on a screening form. These two domains really determine how well your child manages and and thrives with their ADHD.

I created a specific compass tool that looks at all four domains of ADHD and wanted to share with you a couple of different variations that are most common.

2 variations (of the many) of ADHD:

This above child has typical hyperactive ADHD. He actually has some EF skills on board but moves around a lot, is implusive (manifests at school as blurting and getting. up)…the approach for him is making sure he can expend his energy in an acceptable way at school and home while building out more emotional reg skills when things don’t go as anticipated.

This child sits still but struggles with task completion, motivation, and organization….she does have more emotional reg skills on board but struggles with task completion and prioritization (EF skills). The key here is making sure to scaffold executive functioning skills until they are second nature and supporting biology (sleep, nutrition, etc) to keep focused in small sprints.

If you’re wondering what your child’s ADHD profile looks like, fill out the compass. You also get loads of personalized strategies including nutritional guidance tailored to your child’s specific profile.

Parents often get discouraged when they’re trying to figure out where they land on the parenting spectrum. They’re confused about what each approach actually looks like.

They’ve heard of:

authoritarian parenting

gentle parenting

permissive parenting

But they don’t really know what defines each one.

Most parents who are interested in parenting these days have heard of authoritative parenting, but they often picture it as the midpoint between authoritarian and permissive.

Authoritarian is the “do what I say without question; I know best” approach.

Permissive is the “you know best, and the relationship is about keeping everyone comfortable” approach.

Both miss the mark in their approaches and outcomes.

The primary weakness of authoritarian and permissive parenting is that they both are focused on avoiding discomfort.

Authoritarian focuses on the discomfort of the parent. The discomfort usually stems from:

feeling as if they are not in control

anxiety about things not going the way they want

feeling disrespected when obedience is not instant and unquestioned

Permissive parenting focuses on avoiding the child's discomfort. When a parent tries to hold a boundary, the child experiences distress, and the parent moves or erases the boundary to make the distress stop. This comes from a belief that children cannot safely experience distress or discomfort.

Authoritative parenting, unlike authoritarian & permissive, recognizes that discomfort is both normal and tolerable. You can be warm WHILE holding boundaries. You can place limits WHILE remaining connected. Discomfort occurs but doesn’t require a breakdown in connection OR boundaries.

I actually just recently put together a study group on authoritative parenting. It’s been going great, and we have a new session starting soon. You learn and implement authoritative approaches in daily short lessons (delivered straight to your text inbox, no logins required).

You can add your spouse, partner, relative, or friend too so that everyone around the fam learns a new approach together.

That’s it for this week - what’s on your mind or radar? Leave me a voice memo and I’ll make a podcast answering your question! https://drphilboucher.com/ask

Comment below and share what’s on your mind.

🛝 This Week In Parenting · Storyflo