Archive for March 27, 2023

A Word of Warning: It’s In the DNA…Now

Everyone knows that our children inherit various traits from their parents. For instance, children inherit their parents’ eyes and hair, body build and stature. It’s in the genes, which are segments of DNA. Our children get our DNA and so inherit various family traits. But recent research suggests that parents may also have the power to alter their children’s DNA. Specifically, they can introduce additional instructions onto the DNA that will impact how their children’s internal systems will “read the gene” and respond. No, it doesn’t involve surgery or genetic manipulation. Parents have the power to impact gene expression simply through the manner in which they parent. Let me explain.

Researchers at the University of Leuven interviewed adolescents between the ages of 12 and 16 years of age, dividing them into two groups. One group reported their parents as giving support, age expected autonomy, and affection. This group had “supportive parents.” The second group reported their parents as using physical punishment and manipulative behaviors to get their children to comply to overly strict demands and rules. This group had “harsh parents.” 

The researchers then measured the “range of methylation at more than 450,000 places on the DNA.” Methylation is a normal process in which small chemical molecules become added to the DNA and alter how the instructions of the DNA are read and acted upon. In other words, methylation changes how genes are expressed in ways that, ultimately, other people can observe.

The researchers found that those teens who reported having harsher parents had higher rates of methylation than those who had supportive parents. That higher rate of methylation is also associated with depression. In other words, teens who reported having harsher parents also showed a greater tendency toward depression than those who had supportive parents and that tendency toward depression showed up on a microscopic genetic level. Harsh parenting had changed the genetic and DNA structure of their children.

I offer this information as a simple word of warning. How we parent our children may impact them even down to the genetic level. With that caveat, here are some important parenting tips to keep in mind.

  • Spend time with your children, lots of time. Engage with them in a variety of settings. Laugh with them. Cry with them. Have fun with them. Have serious conversations with them. Enjoy their company as often as possible. Time is one of the most valuable currencies with which our children measure love.
  • Listen to your children. Listen to understand them and how they think. Listen from the developmental level of your child’s mind. Don’t expect your 4-year-old to think like a 16-year-old. Let them think like a 4-year-old and enjoy the fascination and wonder of their 4-year-old mind. In fact, enjoy the wonder of how your children think at every age, from one to twenty-five. Remember, listening involves more than the ears. It involves close observation as well.
  • Set age-appropriate boundaries for their safety. Recognize that those boundaries will change as your children mature. In fact, as your children mature those boundaries often become more like “agreements” shared in mutual respect, especially as they move into and through late adolescence. Let them experience an age appropriate increased in autonomy as they mature.
  • Provide them with healthy physical affection and emotional support. Take a page out of the NBA playbook and give your children the hugs, high fives, and fist bumps they need. Go a step further and give them the emotional support they need to mature and learn to regulate their emotions.
  • Acknowledge their efforts, even if the final product is not what you had imagined. (See My Mom Kept That…Art? to learn more.)
  • Let them experience the consequences of their behavior, the positive consequences of hard work and positive behavior as well as the negative consequences of negative behaviors. Don’t rescue them.

Providing your children with supportive parenting with the practices above will nurture healthy children. It may even bake that emotional health right into their DNA.

An Antidote to Fear for Your Family

We live in a society filled with fear…right?  Conspiracy theories abound. Fear of indiscriminate violence keeps us on edge. Parents, in loving effort, hover and become overly protective of their children in order to keep them safe from perceived dangers. The media provides an hourly, 24-hour running presentation of sensational and catastrophic scenes that keep our fears aroused. Aside from all that, relational fears permeate our society. Fear of abandonment arouses our fight or flight response. Fear of failure leaves us frozen in place, afraid to venture out. Fear of not getting enough to survive subtly stimulates our greed.

That’s the bad news; but I have good news, too! We have an antidote to all this fear…and you easily access it every day. You can give this antidote to your family and apply it in your home to create a safe haven that can protect your family from fear that attacks them even outside the home. What is this antidote to fear? Kindness!

Kindness counteracts fear by informing us that we are recognized and loved. Fear of abandonment and estrangement melts away when we become the recipient of kindness. After all, a person took notice of us and cared enough about us to show us kindness. They saw us. They valued us. They graced us with their humanity.

Kindness neutralizes fear by affirming that each person is accepted. We receive kindness from others who, in spite of our differences, value us enough to share their time and effort in providing an act of kindness. A show of kindness when we disagree or experience anger toward one another reveals an acceptance that transcends opinions and feelings.  Shared kindness affirms that we accept one another enough to share kindness.

Kindness overcomes fear by informing us that our needs will be met. Witnessing kindness teaches us that kind people see the needs of others and they reach out to help those others. Kind people walk the streets of our communities. Kind people live in our homes. Kind people will reach out to meet our emotional needs and our physical needs.

Kindness overcomes fear by providing us with second chances. Kindness tells us that we are not defined by our mistakes and our shortcomings but by our humanity, our integrity, our efforts. Kindness does not hold a grudge nor keep a record of wrong. Instead, kindness offers a second chance and a helping hand.

Kindness leads to repentance and opens the door to change negative, hurtful behaviors. When we recognize the kindness others provide, it humbles us. It inspires us to act in kindness. It encourages us to make amends for times we have proven unkind. It returns us to our humanity and our desire to share kindness with others. In fact, a single act of kindness is contagious.”

Yes, kindness is an antidote to fear, an antidote we desperately need in our communities and our families. Knowing the power of kindness and the impact it can have on your family leads me to ask you this one question: Will you give your family the antidote to fear by sharing kindness with them on a daily basis? You’ll be glad you did…and so will your family. You might just spark a kindness revolution.

Generosity is Great…But What Kind?

A study completed through the University of Virginia’s Marriage Project looked at the role of generosity in marriage. The researchers asked 2,870 participants how often they behaved generously toward their partners. Those who scored the highest in generosity also reported they were “very happy” in their marriages. The association between generosity and marital happiness was especially strong in couples with children. In other words, generosity is a crucial ingredient for a healthy, happy marriage.

However, there is nuance in generosity that often gets overlooked when we talk of generosity in marriage. The generosity that will strengthen your marriage and provide greater marital happiness is a selfless generosity. I have seen couples in which a person shares material possessions very generously with their spouse but still remains selfish. They give their spouse what they themselves want, not what their spouse wants. Let me offer a simple example. In our imaginary couple, one person really likes chocolate chip cookies, but their spouse likes sugar cookies. When the “chocolate-chip-cookie-loving-spouse” generously offers their “sugar-cookie-loving-spouse” a chocolate chip cookie, they are not seen as generous. The receiving spouse has learned the giving spouse is aware of their cookie preference, but they are not acting on that awareness. As a result, if this practice continues over time, they begin to feel unseen, unrecognized, and unimportant. They begin to feel as though their spouse doesn’t care enough to recognize their preference and act on that preference. They even begin to see their “chocolate-chip-cookie-loving-spouse” as rather selfish, always thinking only about their own desires, their own likes, and their own interests while ignoring the “sugar-cookie-loving-spouse.”

I know…it’s a silly example. But multiply it by any number of other examples where selfish generosity can show up, like–the TV show each one likes, the type of conversation each one enjoys, the type of food, the activity, the restaurant, the clothes, the time of your availability…the list goes on. When we “generously give” our spouse what we want or what we believe they need, our generosity becomes an act of self-focused egocentrism and loses its power to create intimacy. “Selfish generosity” becomes the deathbed of a marriage while true generosity becomes lifegiving. So, let me ask you: are you generous within your marriage? Even more to the point, are you selfless in your generosity within your marriage…or selfish?

The Gift of Your Child’s Question

Somewhere in the recesses of my brain I recall the phrase “incessant questioning” used to describe the time of childhood in which children ask question after question after question. When I first heard the phrase, I thought it sounded like the child became irritating in their questions. They just kept asking until the adult became exasperated and gave up.

I began to better understand the depth of this “incessant questioning” as my own children grew and developed. And yes, it became exasperating at times. But I began to realize, and I continue to realize increasingly more as I interact with children, that they’re “incessant questioning” is a gift. It enables them to learn and grow. But it’s also a gift they offer to the one from whom they ask questions. Every time my child or another child asks me a question, they offer me a gift. If they ask you a question, they offer you a gift, a beautiful gift. The gift of trust, love, and insight.

A child’s question is a gift of trust. Children only ask questions of those they trust. They ask questions of the person they believe will take the time to listen to the question and respond with thought and meaning, who will take them and their curiosity serious. They ask questions of the ones they trust will invest in their growing curiosity and knowledge.

In addition, a child’s question is a gift of love. Children only ask questions of those they love and feel safe around. Who wants to approach a stranger or a scary person to ask them a question? Children ask questions of those they know value them and consider them important, people who share a love with them.

Finally, a child’s question is a gift of themselves. In asking us questions, children open themselves up to us. They take a step of vulnerability to reveal their point of growth, the limit of their knowledge. They allow themselves to “not know” something in our presence and open themselves to learn from us. They allow us to witness how they think, what they find curious, and what mental gymnastics are hidden inside their little heads, hidden to everyone but those people to whom they choose to reveal them in the form of a question.

The “incessant questioning” of a child is so much more than constant questioning. It’s a wonderful gift of trust, love, and insight. Best of all, this gift never changes. When our teen asks us a question, it’s a wonderful gift of trust, love, and insight. When our young adult children ask us a question, it’s a wonderful gift of trust, love, and insight. Unwrap it joyfully, carefully, with deep respect for the precious gift they offer.

Reduce Family Stress with This Simple Activity

Our families experience an amazing amount of stress in today’s world. We are rushed and pressured from multiple angles—work demands, school demands, sports involvement, 24-hour news feeds, church and community involvement…. The list goes on. Demands and expectations from so many areas impinge upon our lives and increase our stress and our families’ stress. In fact, a whole market has evolved to help us learn to manage our stress.

In the midst of all this, a simple activity arises as an easy way to help your family feel less stressed. The American Heart Association’s Healthy for Good movement completed a nation-wide survey of 1,000 adults in the U.S. to affirm the effectiveness of this activity in reducing stress in a family. What is that activity?  Having regular family meals.

That’s right, sharing a family meal on a regular basis. A full 91% of the survey respondents said their family felt less stressed when they ate together. The respondents also reported that sharing a meal reminded them of the importance of connecting (67%) with others and to slow down in order to take a break [54%]. In addition, respondents reported that sharing meals with others encouraged them to make healthier food choices [59%].


In other words, connecting with family by sharing regular meals together can reduce stress, increase connection, and contribute to healthier food choices. All of this will contribute to greater physical and emotional health for your family as well as greater family intimacy. Sounds like a “no-brainer,” doesn’t it? Sit down with your family and enjoy sharing a family meal every chance you get.

P.S. If you’re looking for ways to make family meals more enjoyable and simple, visit the American Heart Association’s Together Tuesday, for some excellent ideas.

Screen Time? What’s the Real Problem?

The amount of time our children and teens spend looking at a screen (screen time) has become a growing concern for parents, a complex problem every family must navigate. On the one hand, excessive screen time is associated with a greater sense of unhappiness. The more time spent on screens, the more likely a teen is to prefer small, immediate rewards rather than larger, more delayed rewards. Smartphones can also interfere with the parent-child relationship and effective discipline. Research has even suggested that excessive smartphone usage is linked to higher rates of depression.

On the other hand, screen time such as videogames could help overcome dyslexia, improve leadership, pique your teens interest in history, improve decision-making skills, or even ease pain (see 15 Surprising Benefits of Playing Video Games | Mental Floss). In addition, teens have come to see their smartphone as a means of connection to their world. In fact, a study from Michigan State University surveyed 3,258 rural adolescents about topics of self-esteem and social activities. They made comparisons between those with no access or poor internet access at home with those who had good internet access and were heavy users and those whose parents “tightly control or limit their screen use.” 

Interestingly, those who had poor internet access at home and those who had parents who heavily controlled media use had substantially lower self-esteem. The amount of time spent on a screen did not play a role in self-esteem. Instead, the issue of feeling disconnected from sources of entertainment and socialization seemed to have the bigger effect.

This study also found that “every hour spent on social media was accompanied by 21 minutes spent with friends.” So, among rural teens, those who used screens actually spent more time with friends than those who had poor access to the internet. 

No doubt, “screen time” has become a complex issue to navigate as a family. As technology becomes a more integral part of our children’s social world, we need to keep in mind our teen’s need to connect and the smartphone’s benefit in their connection as we help them navigate this issue. Yes, smartphones create a challenge. Yes, they present dangers. But they also provide benefits, one of which is connection to the peer world of relationship and entertainment. How do we navigate this complex issue with our teens? Here are 3 ways to begin.

  • Take an interest in their online activities.
  • Educate yourself about the “cyberworld” your teens are entering.
  • Be a good role model by effectively managing screen time in your life.

 For more on the complexity of teaching our children to navigate their cyberworld, see The Internet: Is It a Risk or an Opportunity for Your Child? YES!!.