Proactive Parenting with Deanna Marie Mason PhD

Everyone knows that social media is highly edited. Only the best photos make the cut and normally only positive status updates are shared. Displaying overly-perfect images alerts people that it’s just too good to be true. This can cause feelings of distrust, envy or aggression if people feel you are creating separation, which is the opposite of what we should be doing with social

This episode concentrates on how families can use traditions to strengthen family bonds while communicating values to children. Traditions, both the big ones as well as the day-to-day ones, teach our children about what family looks and behaves like. Both types are useful because they mark different times circuits. Holiday traditions mark the calendar year while day-to-day traditio

Most parents are familiar with spending a lot of time and money searching for gifts that after being unwrapped and briefly explored, end up in the back of a closet, tucked into a toy box, or simply discarded. Most of the highly advertised, “top toys,” or “must have gifts” are just marketing successes sold to children and parents rather than meeting anyone’s real desires o

When we talk about new parents, there is a tendency to focus on the moms and babies. Dads often get dismissed or pushed to the sidelines. But today, dads are more involved with their children than in previous generations. New research is showing that dads do better psychologically and are more confident in their role function if they get involved right away, during the first year o

In this episode, we explore the data and research being conducted on when solid foods should be introduced to infants as well as how and when foods are introduced influence food allergy development. The information covered draws heavily from the American Academy of Pediatrics and Centers for Disease Control as well as the European Paediatric Association. Additionally, discussion of

This episode is based on new research about how the risk of cyberbullying is increasing because our children are spending more time online for learning and socialising. While we can't change how our children's education is being conducted during these uncertain times with COVID-19, we can support and monitor them to reduce the negative effects of cyberbullying.Topics included in th

This episode is was inspired by a listener question about why some children scream all the time. So I've taken this issue and broken it down into the two main reasons that children learn to scream - they are accidentally taught as small infants to scream as a way to interact with parents or children are frantic for connection with their parents to help them deal with strong emotion

In this episode we are going to talk about the importance being proactive in discussing race and racism with children.The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has made a new recommendation that parents proactively engage with children about racism because racism affects all children, both directly and indirectly.The information explored in this episode is based on the policy statem

This episode is based on new research about how snacking can undermine healthy behaviours, like sport participation. Researcher have compared the number of calories that children consume after sporting activities to the number of calories that they burned while playing. They found that children are eating and drinking more calories from their snacks than what they are expending whi

This episode is focused on the importance of dealing with aggressive behaviours in early childhood. Most parents think that small children will eventually outgrow aggressive behaviours but the research is clear - children to not naturally outgrow hurtful behaviours without assistance from adults. Children need to be guided on how to move from hurtful behaviours to caring behaviours