#63: The Growing Epidemic of Detached Mothers and What We Can Do About It, with Erica Komisar, LCSW

When Erica Komisar, a venerated psychoanalyst, joined me for a heart-to-heart, we peeled back the layers of motherhood's unspoken complexities and its intersection with professional life. We navigated through the cultural currents that often undervalue the art of nurturing, while also examining how the professional world beckons women with the allure of success outside the home. This conversation isn't just about the choices we make; it's a deeper look into the societal narratives that shape these decisions and the profound impact of maternal presence on the emotional and psychological development of our children.

Being a mother who transitioned from government service to homeschooling, I've lived the tug-of-war between career ambitions and the yearning to be an anchor in my children's life. This episode is a canvas of my reflections, shared struggles, and the wisdom Erica brings on how societal changes influence our parenting skills, including the often-overlooked need for recognizing and respecting the emotions tied to our sense of loss and gain in this journey. We ponder the significance of being fully present, the enchantment of early childhood development, and the imperative to guard our young ones from the potential pitfalls of technology.

With the world polarized on how to balance career and family, our dialogue aspires to foster respect for the myriad choices parents face, advocating for an integrated approach that honors different paths to shaping our children's futures. Join us on this expedition to reimagine motherhood's essence and the undeniable power of parental influence.
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. I'm Cheryl and I invite you to join me on my quest to find out why are people homeschooling, how do you do it, how does it differ from region to region, and should I homeschool my kids? Stick with me as I interview homeschooling families across the country to unfold the answers to each of these questions week by week. Welcome, and with us. Today. I have the privilege and honor of welcoming Erica Komisar. Thank you so much for being here, erica. Thank you for having me. So, erica, you were first a social worker and then a psychoanalyst, which, if you could just elaborate on what that is for the audience and myself, that would be wonderful.

Speaker 2: 0:53

Well, a psychoanalyst is someone who is trained for many years to see a person as a whole, meaning to see their experiences of the past as very important for how they've gotten to the present and to where they're going to go in the future. So there are many types of therapy that are very symptom-oriented just relieving symptoms, symptoms. Psychoanalysts actually think of symptoms as being a part of a larger issue and a deeper issue and an issue that is part of both the history of the person and the present of the person. And that's a different orientation, because today it's become a very superficial way of looking at mental health. And I think part of the problem is how we're actually addressing and treating mental health today, because we've really gotten into this sort of cognitive behavioral therapy and very surface-oriented therapies that are just in medication from psychiatrists, which is just dealing with symptoms. But psychoanalysts tend to help people with symptoms, but by dealing with things from its origins.

Speaker 1: 2:03

Well, that makes a lot of sense. And your book and you happened to fall into my life at such an interesting time, because I have been saying, I mean, I am someone who has been a government worker for 16 years kind of realized, hey, maybe this isn't the way we're supposed to be doing life. I was sending my son to daycare. Maybe this isn't the way we're supposed to be doing life. I was sending my son to daycare, I was sitting in a cubicle which I had already felt like before I had kids was kind of just wasting my life away.

Speaker 1: 2:33

But we are told the pension, the pension, the pension. And I talk about this often on my podcast because I don't hear it discussed enough how these carrots are dangled in front of us to kind of keep following oh, I'll get a pension, I'll get health insurance, I'll get you know, even with school, you get the prom or the football game. They dangle these carrots, but it's like, what are they taking from us in the meantime? So for me, so I had the whole experience with sending my son to daycare while I was away at work, for I definitely did what you said not to do in the book. Being there was. I compacted it all into four long days so that I had a couple more days off with him.

Speaker 1: 3:17

And yeah, what you explained in that book is how that is just not not the best way to go about the process if you do have to be at work. But the bigger question is, why do we feel that we have to be at work? So what has been your take on that?

Speaker 2: 3:31

Well, I mean women work in other countries. Let me just say that Because I think it's confusing and the title of the book implies that I don't expect that women will work. Sometimes women have to work, you know, just financially. They're single moms or parents can't survive on one income. But in other parts of the world women work in such a way that they don't have to leave their children as much. So you know the kind of work that they do. They take their children with them. If they're running a store, their children are with them. If they're out in the fields, their children are with them. If they're at a weaving or baking cooperative working with other women, their children are all with them.

Speaker 2: 4:13

And so you know, it's not that women don't work in work because it's hard work. It may be the hardest work. It may be the work that a lot of women and men run away from to go to offices because they think office work is less complicated and hard than raising children. We don't talk about that either. How going out into the world is an escape from raising children, right?

Speaker 2: 4:39

It's not always I have to go to work. Sometimes it's I want to go to work because I can't stand being with my children and we don't talk about that. That somehow raising children has become promoted as being obligatory and burdensome and awful and painful, and you know it's, it's got to it's. I almost feel like mothering and nurturing needs a PR campaign. Yes, that is that mothering is hard work, but it's joyful work, it's meaningful work, it's. It's work that, um, I heard a wonderful quote today, which is that we create the children of tomorrow because of the mothering of today. And and so you know, I think, um, yeah, and also we've been told as women that it's not meaningful, that it's ordinary, that anybody can do it, that it doesn't give you freedom, that it doesn't give you status, that it doesn't give you money, that it. You know it's. Yeah, we need to change the PR, for mothering is what we really need to do.

Speaker 1: 5:45

Absolutely, and I say this all the time on my podcast now. Is that? Well, when I did work, at least I had two 15-minute breaks and a half-hour lunch where you can kind of just go for a walk and listen to music or whatnot. But you're right about it being more rewarding. And I was someone that kind of grew up in the era I graduated in 2002 from high school and went right into the college scene.

Speaker 1: 6:09

And now that my sister's kids are all at that era of their life and they just kind of don't know like where to go, what to do and I'm looking at what's going on with them I'm like, wow, I, I fell into this sort of like, you know, just being kind of herded with the rest of the cattle. This is the way to go, go to college and for what? Like I didn't know what I wanted to be. It's not like school or my parents prepared me for that. So then you come out after four years or more with this debt, and then it's so easy to get a car loan and credit cards. So then you kind of have this credit card debt and car loan debt you know, I see it with my sister's kids now, before you know it, society or banking or however it is has allowed us to fall into this debt, that we're a slave to the system. We kind of have to work. So if 10 years later you decide, I think I'd like to be a stay at home mom, you really kind of have already, you're in too deep. At that point it's impossible. You know, luckily for me my husband, you know, he got in early with the trades and has just, you know, been a hard worker and a saver.

Speaker 1: 7:16

So now I'm experiencing the other side where, after I had my daughter a year and a half ago, you know, I've been home and I'm seeing the difference and it's funny because you talk about this in your book a lot too the differences and we think of it being as like, oh, I'm missing, like their first steps or their first crawling or their first word, and it's so much more than that.

Speaker 1: 7:36

And I've been, I've been taking notes for the last year on the little things that I missed with my son and I kind of feel like I broke my son at this point, things that I missed with my son, and I kind of feel like I broke my son at this point. He's five, so like I miss those critical years being home with them and being present. You talk about that too, and that's where I am, and I'm sure many people listening fall short, I think, just because now that I'm home with them, that's enough and it's not. We have the distraction from the phones. Where do you see that? How do you see that factoring in parenthood and the development of our children?

Speaker 2: 8:13

Well, I mean presence. The word presence really has a lot to do with interest Meaning. You know, we tend to be more emotionally present when we're getting something in return. I hate to say it, but it's not all. You know.

Speaker 2: 8:31

The truth is that nurturing, from a biological perspective, is not just to give. You give a lot, but you also get a lot if you are healthy. And what I mean by that is that nurturing triggers an oxytocin exchange. Call it an exchange of a love hormone, which is that when you nurture your child and they smile at you and they come give you a hug, it stimulates a part of you that lights up like Christmas. It stimulates oxytocin in your brain which is like serotonin. It's supposed to, but interestingly, there's a lot that has interfered with that exchange. So what we know is that oxytocin requires oxytocin receptors. So think of that exchange as being like a pitcher and a catcher in a baseball game. So you need to have the catcher to catch the oxytocin pitching to you, right?

Speaker 2: 9:29

And what can happen generationally is that we lose the joy we lose. We actually lose the receptors. It's kind of the use it or lose it, and that can be passed down generationally, which is that the next generation doesn't. Actually, if the last generation didn't feel joy. That's why that quote was so interesting. That I picked up on is that if you don't, in the present, have joy of mothering, you're not going to pass it on to the next generation. And so what I'm finding interesting is that mothers actually don't. Many mothers are not feeling joy. They're not getting that serotonin rush from nurturing their young. They're not feeling empathic towards.

Speaker 2: 10:15

Oxytocin is supposed to make mother's behavior more sensitive, empathic. It's supposed to stimulate a joyful response, but also a sensitive, empathic response. It's almost as if there's a block now where there's mothers. Many mothers can't actually feel, they can't look at their children and say, you know, and the mothers who can feel guilty, and so which is why I say yahoo to guilt, yay to guilt, and it's just the opposite of what society tells me, because I'm like okay, the guilt means there's some oxytocin exchange and you actually are preoccupied with the wellbeing of your child and whether or not you have to leave them. You feel badly for them. We want mothers to feel badly when they leave their children because that's a healthy maternal, what we call maternal preoccupation. Sometimes you have to leave your child and you have to deal with that guilt. But you know, the idea is, if you don't feel it, that's actually a very strange dissociative, defensive response, right? And maybe that mother's mother was cut off and didn't pass down, so maybe had an attachment disorder and didn't pass down to the next generation the ability to feel or see pain in their children. And this is what we call generational expression of trauma and generational expression of attachment disorders. And this is what I'm seeing more and more in mothers Not all mothers, I mean.

Speaker 2: 11:41

You know, I do these podcasts, I write books, I write articles. People write me and say, oh my god, all those feelings I was having that society was telling me were bad and my husband was telling me were bad and my mother-in-law was telling me were actually good. I'm like, yes, they were good. So not all mothers, but many mothers probably the ones who aren't writing me are not feeling, aren't writing me, are not feeling. They're not feeling anything. They're dead inside when it comes to seeing and identifying pain in their children.

Speaker 1: 12:12

You hit on a lot of important things there and I've been saying this for a while now that my mother so she was adopted right straight from. You know the time she was born and I and I'll like kind of joke, but it's very true and it's very sad. You know that that she's the way she is because she wasn't held as a baby and she was adopted into a loving family very soon. But, like you were talking about in your book too, the hearing your mother while you were in utero. You hear her voice, you hear her heartbeat, you know her smell. Yeah, when you are born while you are in utero, you hear her voice you hear her?

Speaker 1: 12:46

heartbeat. You know her smell. Yeah, when you are born you are looking for that and when you're not getting that, that makes synapses in your brain not connect. That should be connecting and they should be connecting for years to come. So when that's not happening, I mean that makes perfect sense. My mother and I see I always wanted a son because I said, oh, my mother and I just don't get along. I mean we're close as in, we see each other every week, but it's been 40 years and we have not repaired this relationship and I'm like I don't want a daughter because I don't want to have that with her. I want a son. Thinking that that was the problem. And now that I have a son and a daughter, she's very connected to me. But again, I've been with her since the very beginning, still nursing.

Speaker 2: 13:30

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:31

And my son. There's this like wall between us and I. I it's definitely because it's generational from my mom, and then you add in my father's upbringing too, and it's like this combination and I know I'm not alone in saying this. That's why I'm kind of talking about it, because a lot of people have these parents that had no. You know, my mother didn't have connections, she didn't have love, so then she didn't know how to give it to me. Perfect example I'm still nursing my daughter. She's 19 months old and my mother goes when are you going to start giving her real milk? It's just this, like she wasn't taught that that was so. I didn't grow up with that. And then I put things like that onto my son without even knowing it, because it's just, it's in our brains. But the second part I was thinking as you were talking was these connections.

Speaker 1: 14:21

These mothers are not feeling getting that serotonin boost, the oxytocin, because we are a lot of us are on antidepressants or anxiety meds or alcohol, and once you're from the best of my knowledge, I'm not a medical doctor either but your synapses make connections and if you have a fake stimulus, like from alcohol, say and I only know this from reading this Naked Mind by Annie Grace that you're.

Speaker 1: 14:56

So you're getting a fake boost of the serotonin and then your body's then looking for that again. So it gives you. Then you have a drink the next day and then you get that fake boost and it's like a dopamine serotonin. You know you know much more about that than I do, I'm sure, but after a while of that you're no longer able to experience joy and that serotonin or dopamine or oxytocin boost of natural things in life that are occurring, like running a marathon or getting a hug from your child or having date night with your spouse. Your body is just used to that artificial stimulus and then it looks for it again. So it's almost like your body's so busy, your brain's so busy, looking for that next artificial boost, that you're not able to enjoy the natural boosts that life has to offer. Do you think any of that? There's truth to any of that?

Speaker 2: 15:50

I mean there's definitely a connection to. I mean, it's a puzzle, right? So there's a piece of it. That is about how, how we think about sadness, how we think about loss, how we think about discomfort, right, I mean, there's a lot of talk about how no one wants to deal with discomfort, um, but the truth is that, um, losses in the past have to be examined. Um, they have to be examined at some point. And if your defenses are holding and you're functioning pretty well and there's nothing that is triggering you to look more deeply, you can go on for quite some time with never having mourned or evaluated or examined how losses in the past have impacted you. You know.

Speaker 1: 16:48

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Speaker 1: 17:54

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Speaker 1: 18:27

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Speaker 2: 19:10

And then something will happen An illness, a death, loss of a job, a broken heart, having a child believe it or not is a kind of psychotic experience you think about. You know a little person growing inside your body and then coming out. It's the most beautiful thing in the world, but it's also, if you really think about it, it could trigger almost and it does in many women postpartum depression with psychotic features. You know where women really feel crazy and you could say that we're not really thinking about how our losses in the past affect us. So depression the definition of depression is preoccupation with past losses. That is what depression is. Living in the past, anxiety, anxiety is preoccupation with future losses that haven't occurred and may never occur.

Speaker 1: 20:11

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:12

So what's the common feature there? It's loss, and I think as a society we're not very good at dealing with loss, you know. I mean, I for one am not someone who judges. In the end I say the ideal is, you know, we want to have mothers and fathers, and that's the ideal is to have two parents of different genders for a variety of reasons, because we're born different genders. We may not identify as that gender, but we're born different genders and so we have different parents of those genders.

Speaker 2: 20:45

If you do have less than ideal, if you have two fathers, two mothers, the acknowledgement of the loss of not having a mother or not having a father helps that child to get on with loving what they have and feeling good about it. So in your mother's case of being adopted, it's interesting. It's not adoption that is. Adoption is traumatic, even if you're adopted at birth. That's the truth. But it's not adoption that is really hard on children as much as it is not ever having mourned.

Speaker 2: 21:21

You know, many children who are adopted, particularly in the old days, were taught that you have two great parents now and we love you and we're your parents, and you know, don't think about that. You know, we're sort of like, and it's sort of what gay couples are doing too. You have two great dads or two great moms. You know you're not like the other kid, you know, but it's no room for you know, let that child mourn the loss of not having their biological mother or a biological father, or let them mourn, and then they can be very healthy growing up. But it's something in our society. So that's a lot of the medicating is about kind of suppressing any feelings of loss or discomfort. It's really sort of no pain, no discomfort. And the truth is that examining our pain and discomfort helps us to grow, it helps us to be better, it helps us to attach more deeply, it helps us to see our life with all of our losses, and appreciate and be grateful for what we. But that's not what our society promotes, right.

Speaker 1: 22:34

Not at all, and especially when I think back to shows that I grew up on. You know again that high school college era for me was Friends and Sex and the City, and it's this single lifestyle in New York City. And I was thinking today about some of the episodes where they have kids and it's oh, and I got to get right back to work, and that's what the episodes are centered around about how they're missing work and how stressful having a child is and it is because you don't get the breaks. But, like you were kind of saying, the rewards in the end are way bigger. You know I, unless maybe you have a job where you cure cancer and you've you, you know, but the rewards of being home and and and being present, because that is such a, you know, I feel like, okay, I can check the boxes.

Speaker 1: 23:24

I realized that my time was being wasted in a cubicle, I realized that my kids need me at home and there's better ways for us as a family to learn. And you know I can, I can check those boxes, but if I have a phone in my other hand as I'm checking the boxes, it really doesn't mean much, does it? They might as well just be at school and daycare all day? I really have to. I got rid of the career and then started a podcast. It's so I'm learning, but at the same time you have to put boundaries up. And I know I have to put boundaries up. I should reword it so I have to put boundaries up.

Speaker 2: 23:59

Well, we want to. Wherever we are, whatever we're doing, we want to be there.

Speaker 1: 24:04

We want to be wherever we are in the moment.

Speaker 2: 24:06

We want to be with the people we're with. You know we can be be with people that have our mind on lunch or what we're doing for work tomorrow or what, where our children need to go for their basketball. I mean, I think it's very hard, you know. I suppose it's why everybody's promoting mindfulness, because it helps you to put blinders on, and it is blinders essentially. You really have to disconnect from all the extraneous information around you, and that's hard if you have your phone or your computer, your iPad or the TV on.

Speaker 2: 24:37

So you know, if you're with a baby, you know the way I like to describe it is you are that baby's entire universe. That's the best way I can describe it. Now, we used to have a deep sense of that as mothers. I feel like over the last 75 years we've really lost that instinct that we are that baby's entire universe. And so you hear mothers justifying and saying, ah, anybody can do it. I can give it to the next door neighbor or the nanny, the daycare worker, any, no, no, you are unique to that baby. Why a mother would ever want to believe that she's not unique? That already in and of itself is an attachment disorder, that's saying I don't want this baby to attach to me in a unique way, because that means I have to attach to this baby in a unique way.

Speaker 1: 25:32

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:32

You see. So I do believe that we've lost some, you know. The other thing is that it is normal Unless you're in a field that just loves babies and thinks about them and intellectualizes. You know, I mean my field is unless you're a teacher or a therapist or someone who specializes in child development, I suppose I'm fascinated with babies. When I see babies I'm transfixed. But I've been studying babies for the last 35 years of my career.

Speaker 2: 26:04

But if you're not in the field, then I suppose it's quite normal not to be preoccupied nor that interested in other people's babies. You know, you might say, oh Jane, your baby's cute, you know. But to really be fascinated, right, to be really interested, but with your own baby, it's what's the point of sitting with them and doing floor time more? They're really not interested in the growth and development of their own children. They can only do it for limited periods of time and then they have to be off doing something else. It's like it's not interesting to them. And that is not something has happened to us as a species when we're not preoccupied with our babies.

Speaker 1: 27:02

And yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:03

So I think that, like I was saying before, probably the well, even to take it a step further back, the social media and the instant, like I talk about video games and the synapses that connect when a young child looks at video games Now, looking at um, you know, a video game from you know Game Boy and Atari versus something just marketed today is going to be very different and make different connections with the synapses.

Speaker 1: 27:34

But it's and I think it has to do with screen changes per second, you know, or per minute. If you're used to a thousand screen changes per 10 seconds, then your brain's going to be looking for that when you're out in a meadow or reading a book. So to have just that one scene I think gives us anxiety. If we're used to seeing a whole bunch of different screens per second and that might be the same when we are with our children getting on the floor and doing playtime it's like, okay, I'm getting anxious because my synapses have been made that I should be seeing a lot of things per second and I'm just here and it almost gives us that like fear of missing out what else is going on or what else should I be seeing. Our brain's looking for more. I don't know if there's any truth to that.

Speaker 2: 28:27

There is, and Jonathan Haidt has written a beautiful book that's just come out about social media and technology since 2010 and how it's impacted the brains of our young people and how those young people grow up into adults. And how it's impacted the brains of our young people and how those young people grow up into adults and how those adults have become more and more distracted and less and less able. But you know the thing that is curious to me. So this is where the theory yes, and it has contributed to more of the mental illness crisis. It's not the only piece of a very big puzzle, but it's a very big piece. The thing that's curious to me is, from a very young age, we train young people to be interested and focus on work, academics, career. We tell them this is something, this is meaningful, this is what you should focus on, and we almost focus their brains in such a way that that is what they become focused on. Do we teach high school students about child development when we teach them psychology? Let me tell you, the psychology classes in high school, if they even have them, are experimental psychology, where they teach them about Pavlov's dog and the response of rats to stimuli, and it's the most boring. Psychology has nothing to do with what they'll ever really need or understand in their lives. You know why aren't we teaching high school students a mandatory biology class on the neuroscience of attachment, on what babies need? And you know I mean so to get them interested. So when they have babies of their own one, they have a deep sense of what children need before they choose their careers, both men and women. But also so when their babies come into this world they don't just see them as blobs that are boring. I mean it's quite fascinating to me that I mean I'm so fascinated with babies and how every single action and inaction is growth for that baby. I mean there are millions of synapses firing every second. And so you know.

Speaker 2: 30:34

For people to come up, men and women, to come up to me at cocktail parties because they know they know me at this point, and they say you know, they say you know. For people to come up, men and women, to come up to me at cocktail parties because they know they know me at this point and they say you know, they say you know it's not babies, you know they're not really, they don't, they're not doing anything, they're just. They're just crying and pooping and sleeping and you know it's better if I'm home later with them, right? When not in the first few years, because they're just so, they're not doing anything and I have to.

Speaker 2: 31:00

It takes every bit of my patience to say very calmly and sweetly and empathically let me help you understand what's going on. There is more going on in that three year period than will ever go on in that child's growth for the rest of their lives. 85% of their right brain is growing in that first year and you and your interaction with that child is going to dictate how that right brain develops. Every time that baby puts a toy in their mouth, every time they get up and stand up and toddle and fall down, they're learning something and their brain is developing. So if you know what's happening and you know what you're looking at, it could be quite fascinating.

Speaker 2: 31:43

So why don't we get kids interested in the fascination of what children, what's happening in their brains, what's happening to them emotionally and psychologically and biologically and neurologically?

Speaker 2: 31:57

You know, and so, yeah, I mean to me this is we focus young people at a very young age that the important thing in life is to have a successful career, to focus on intellectual pursuits, which I agree. But for me to say that babies are not stimulating the intellectual parts of your brain, I mean for me, when I'm looking at a baby, I'm looking at that baby with great fascination and thinking about how that baby's. I'm interested. We've lost interest in children. They're boring to us. This is not normal. Can you imagine if any other mammalian species got bored with their young and just left them? You know, I mean, some mammals have to leave for short periods of time to go get young and just left them? You know, I mean some mammals have to leave for short periods of time to go get food and come right back. But can you imagine if, for 10 hours a day, mother mammals just left their babies because it was boring? Those species wouldn't survive.

Speaker 1: 32:53

Yes, the walrus stays with the mother for three years and and we give six weeks, eight weeks, if you have a cesarean, I mean it is. It is bizarre. I'd never thought about it in in terms of of actually studying it in school and how valuable that would be to us and our, our children, to actually learn what's going on. Because you're so right and I say this all the time about because I grew up, I'm, I'm in New York as well, I believe you're, you're down in the city, right? Yeah, I'm a, I'm more near the Capitol, but, coming from the Capitol region area, nature wasn't ever, ever something on my radar.

Speaker 2: 33:33

Right.

Speaker 1: 33:34

And now I live a little bit more East in in the hillside and I'm like, oh, I can hear coyotes at night. That's weird, what are they doing? And my husband will tell him cause he grew up like this, and he'll say, oh, look at, they must have found you know they're calling the other ones cause they found food and and. Or you know why certain bugs come out at certain times of the year and what the bees are actually doing. So, like I joke, because five years ago I'm having a professional come in and spray to kill all the bees and then last summer it's like save the bees, and you're putting a bee houses everywhere. So it's like you don't know what's fascinating if it hasn't been introduced to you, which is kind of why.

Speaker 1: 34:18

You know, I started the podcast because I was like could I homeschool? I don't know, I found school quite boring. I don't think I want to do it. Do I want to subject my child to it either? And it was a plethora of other reasons that I talked about in the first episode.

Speaker 1: 34:32

But since talking to homeschooling families and just kind of looking at education because again, another thing, when you don't know about it, you don't know to question it. So it's like why are we learning this way? Why are we learning what we're learning in school and what are we not learning? And that's so true. And yeah, when I see my daughter just go through different things, like, for instance, waking up from a nap, but she's not actually ready to wake up, or waking up in the morning, and she, she just wants to nurse, to get put back to sleep, so it's like a thing now I'll get up at 5.00 AM and I know I have to go back probably around six, 30 and seven, 30 to nurse her for a few minutes until she's up for real at nine.

Speaker 1: 35:16

And my previous life it was like, okay, everybody up, we got to get to daycare, we got to get to work, we got to get out of the house and then you're coming in the house at the end of the day. Okay, everybody got to sit down, we got to get food on the table and we got to get to the sports practice and baths and two beds, so we can do it all over again. And what a crazy way to live. And you don't even know to question it until you realize there's a whole other side that you could have, and we think of it in terms of making sacrifices. But I don't think, now that I've seen both sides leaving a job and some money, that somebody at the Federal Reserve says it's worth this much today and who knows what it'll be worth tomorrow.

Speaker 1: 36:02

Are we really sacrificing if we're giving that up to be with our kids and I think you touched on this in your book too it's like a short term. Maybe you're uncomfortable in the short term because you have less money, but in the longterm you're securing a more fulfilling and connected relationship with a child that hopefully won't resent you because you didn't, like you know, leave them. So my question for you would be then what could we do to turn it around? Is there like look, my son's five and a half. Have I broken him, or is there hope?

Speaker 2: 36:33

Well, the answer is there's always hope, as long as you have enough time with your children to repair what's happened in the past. So you know, as long as they're home with you. You know to say that I wrote a book. The second book was about the second critical window of brain development, which is nine to 25. So technically, you have till about 25. The door, the window, is open where the brain is in a very plastic state, right. But the problem is once they leave home, at about 18, most kids leave home at 18 in America Not so in other countries, by the way, but in our country they leave home at 18. And so you have until about 18 to really influence them.

Speaker 1: 37:17

Are you trying to pick a curriculum but feel a little overwhelmed at the variety of options? Me too. I mean, how do you pick a curriculum when you don't know what each one has to offer? That's been my biggest problem. Well, I am here to help. I just launched a premium content series. That means it's $3 a month, which will just help cover the cost of running the podcast In my curriculum series. That means it's $3 a month, which will just help cover the cost of running the podcast.

Speaker 1: 37:37

In my curriculum series, I interview homeschooling students and parents and curriculum creators about specific curriculum each week so that you can take the guesswork out of your curriculum choices. I'll be asking questions like what does the day-to-day look like with this curriculum? What does it cover from a bird's eye view? How long does one lesson take to complete? How many lessons does the curriculum contain and what does it cost? Did you have to order the book or could you download them and print them somewhere like your library?

Speaker 1: 38:04

Does this curriculum have a lot of games, writing or crafts, and did your child enjoy this curriculum? Can you do it with more than one child at a time? And if I did this curriculum with my child, would I need to add any sort of supplements to it. These are all questions I've had while I search for the perfect curriculum to suit my son's personality and my expectations. Let's face it there is no one curriculum out there that will work best for every child and adult, so I invite you to join me in my search to find out what every curriculum has to offer, so that you can feel confident in your curriculum choices and enjoy your homeschooling journey that much more. Right where you find all of the homeschool how-to podcast episodes, you'll see my curriculum series and you can subscribe today.

Speaker 2: 38:49

So the answer is you can repair maybe not all of it, but a lot of it if you change your behavior and change the way you interact with your child. Now and it is different they are at school when they're five years old. They're at school, you know, five, six hours a day usually, which is a lot actually at five years old. So you know, in my day kindergarten was just mornings. You either got the morning slot or the afternoon slot, which meant that you went from like nine to 12 or like one to four.

Speaker 2: 39:24

And you didn't always have a choice right. My mother was given the morning slot, but other mothers were given the afternoon slot, and that was kindergarten. And kindergarten was literally the garden of play. That's what it means in German, kindergarten the garden of play. And it wasn't meant to be left brain learning or cognitive based learning. It was learning through play imaginary play, physical play, manipulatives, play, art, music. There wasn't any learning your letters or sitting in. Whatever you did as a group, it wasn't even circle time. They just said everybody sit down, and the teacher talked to you for a few minutes and then you went about your business again and you played and you basically did free play. That's what you did. You went outside, you were on the swings and what the teachers were trying to do in kindergarten was just make sure that kids understood that they were going into group environments in the future. It was to get them used to socialization and the idea of sharing and sharing toys and sort of how to interact socially with other people. It wasn't at all about left brain development, but today it is.

Speaker 2: 40:28

But let's say you have five or six hours in kindergarten and that gives you quite a long time to work, to do your podcast. For me to see patients, for you to do your law, if you're a lawyer to be a lawyer. If you're a carpenter to do your carpentry, if you're an accountant to do your accounting. It's quite a long time six hours if you think about it. But then they need you, and so the idea is how do you repair it? Your presence is required, particularly at transition periods going to bed, waking up in the morning, going to school, coming home from school. These are the most tender and important times to be there and then to be really present, to be really interested, to be really focused in an undistracted way. To put your phone away, to be really focused in an undistracted way. To put your phone away, to not talk to other people. While you're communicating with your child, you know for the most part to you know to focus on activities with them and play with them, not every minute, but just the idea is that's how you repair. So what you do to repair is you go back and you do a lot of the things that you didn't do the first go around. But the answer is I wrote the second book to say that all is not lost if you miss the first window, but if you have an opportunity, because you've read my book and you understand now and you have a baby who's in that window, it's always best to get to that window first if you can.

Speaker 2: 41:49

But if you can't, you can repair. And sometimes, you know, I have an ACL tear. I got it skiing many years ago in my right knee when I was in my 20s. I'm almost 60 now. Well, I'll tell you that right knee because I have, you know, had that surgery and have worked on that knee. That knee is stronger than my left knee. So talk about resilience. It can be that a child who you repair things with you can make really resilient and strong and healthy. But you have to change your ways. You have to say wait a second. I didn't do it so well, the first five years I'm going to change the way either, the way I work, the way I interact with my child, the time I spend with my child. I'm going to go to therapy and talk to someone to understand what my blocks are and be the most loving and present parent. You know that's repair.

Speaker 1: 42:39

And for the parents who, like a lot of them listening to this podcast, either do homeschool or want to homeschool. So if we don't have that five or six hour block where our kids are at school to do the work, do you have recommendations on how to juggle? You know, maybe there's a conversation in the morning. Hey, I am going to be on my phone or the computer to do work for this amount of time. Here are the options that you can do during that time. And then, you know, make sure that that is. You know, we do put our phones away for the rest.

Speaker 2: 43:14

So the truth is that if you see children in school in public or private schools there's a lot of the time that they're working independently. So one thing you can do is you can share a space with your child where you say you know what my work is working on my podcast, your work is working on your math homework or your English homework, so I'm going to teach you the lesson this morning, we're going to go over it and then you are going to work on it for 45 minutes or an hour and I'm going to work. And these are older children. Obviously these aren't little children, right, but it could work with coloring.

Speaker 2: 43:54

Yeah, if it's five years old. You're going to say you work on your coloring for the next 25 minutes and I'll work on my work, this is my work and this is your work, and then we're going to get together again and I'm going to look at your work and we're going to talk about it, and you know. So, yeah, you definitely can. You can sit side by side, um, and and you know, as a homeschooler, you could teach a lesson. And the truth is that, for for most teachers, there's they're sitting and waiting for children to complete independent work, and then the reengaging, and then they're encouraging the children again to practice their independent work and reengaging, and so that's sort of what it would be like, independent work and re-engaging, and so that's sort of what it would be like intermittently, all day. You know, with young children, I would say being in the same room as opposed to another room, but with older children, I would say they can be in their room and you can say you do your work, I'll do my work, and then we'll come back together. You know, some people who read my book, they misunderstand it a little bit because they see it as having to be present every single minute of every single day, which would drive both your children crazy and you crazy. The idea is to be as present as you can, given each of your needs for space I mean, different children need different amounts of space and different adults need different amounts of space. So, but the idea is to be able to reconnect and to be able to read social cues. So if you see that your child needs you to put down your work, whatever you're doing, and say this can wait, you know, and I'll come back to it and I'm going to go see what my child needs and then I'll come back to it. That requires the ability to read social cues, which, interestingly, is a right brain function. So as a society, we've lost that.

Speaker 2: 45:44

So one of the things is remember I said that mothers can't read their babies, to stress so much, they can't read when their babies are in pain and they don't feel the guilt a lot of them. And so that is yeah, we want to feel. That's the point. We want to be sensitive, we want to tune in, we want to read social cues, but we're not meant to interact with one another every second of every day. That would be crazy making. If you ever watch a baby with a mother. They take breaks when they've had enough of interacting with their mother. They look away, they look at the light, they suck their thumb, they play with their hands, they pick up a toy and then they'll turn back to the mother. So they need breaks too, right? So it's not that you don't take breaks during the day, but you're reconnecting and you're tuning into them when they need you in distress or when they want to play with you. So it's really social cues. It's more sort of the ability to read social cues that helps you to understand how present to be.

Speaker 1: 46:44

Absolutely. I think, yeah, in kind of wrapping up, where do you see this going? I mean, this really does need to be a movement. It seems, like you said, in 75 years we've lost just so much of just what being a mother is and what a child goes through. Do you see it coming back? I mean it feels like you're like the one woman like marching. You know, because when we think of women's liberation, you know I say this a lot that I just learned how to bake sourdough bread and I'm like, oh my gosh, I feel so liberated. I don't need a grocery store to supply me with bread.

Speaker 1: 47:24

And the women of the 60s movement are turning over like that's not what we, that's what we fought against. So it's like this push-pull of what liberation means to certain people. But it feels like, yeah, we're just getting more and more detached. How do we bring it back? And I think you had said understanding that maybe what our parents had gone through has to change with us, In a time where information is so readily at hand and obviously people are feeling this, because you have, you know, these, these talks that you're giving snippets of them are, you know, going viral and people are seeing you and feeling what you're saying. So I, I, I do feel that there's hope, Do you?

Speaker 2: 48:11

I mean in the last year. Um, some of these interviews I've done have gone viral. So does that give me hope? Yes, I'll tell you one interesting fact, though, which is that it's gone viral only not only I shouldn't say that, but mostly on the right, in a conservative group of people. Why it's not touching more people broadly is because the world has become such a binary place, and that's disturbing to me. It's disturbing because why should one group of people it resonate with and not another? The truth is that it's not going to. The message is not going to resonate with everyone, for a variety of reasons, and I'm going to say as a woman who benefited from the women's lib movement remember, I'm almost 60. I was born in 1964. So you know, I remember, you know the marches and the people saying, you know women's rights, and I still have that in my head, I remember.

Speaker 2: 49:17

And certainly every woman benefits from the ability to choose whether it's before she has children, integrating work while she has children, or after her children are grown to be able to be free and work and be successful in whatever she chooses to do, and that was a good thing. The problem was it became exclusionary, and what I mean by that is that the concept of working outside the home became sort of a binary thing from having children. And that's where it went too far. And I say this to my daughter, who's very liberal, and she says you know well, movements have to swing. And I said you're absolutely right, sometimes they have to swing, but it's it's swung too far because what it did is it neglected and in those years did a lot of damage in neglecting one of the most important roles that that we'll ever have, which is nurturing, whether it's caring for our loved ones, our children, our elderly, our. You know, we put our elderly in nursing homes too, you know, as opposed to care for them because we're too busy, because our careers matter too much. So you know, we lost so much, we gained so much and we lost so much. So now we have to come back to some kind of integration where we can have choice and be professionals.

Speaker 2: 50:35

If we want to be, maybe take time off from our careers, choose to be mothers as our careers. We should have the choice and no one should judge us for doing that and no one should judge women for wanting to work but to lose sight of the fact that if you do have children. Penelope Leach said this many years before me In all her books. She said you know, most anyone can have a child. Having a child is you know, and that's not true. Today A lot of women can't have children. But the idea is, you know you can have children, but it's really caring for them that matters. That's what matters, not the physical having them, and it's certainly not possessing them and saying I have children. It's the effort you put into raising them yourself and caring for them that really makes the difference of who.

Speaker 1: 51:24

That child becomes Absolutely, yeah yeah. Thinking back on just my growing up and I've said this many times on my podcast like I don't know if reading books to children is something new, but it seems to be in the homeschool community at least. You know all you hear like it. If you don't do anything else with your children, just read to them, read to them, read to them. And I don't ever remember my mother reading a book to me and I don't know if it just wasn't a thing back in the 80s and 90s or if that's just my scenario.

Speaker 2: 51:57

No, I would say if it happened, you'd remember it, or if it happened with great consistency and if it was a meaningful connection with your mother, you'd remember it. I think there's a lot of people who can't remember their childhood. There's a lot of not remembering your childhood and you'd say that is protection, unless you have a neurological disease like Alzheimer's. If you can't remember your childhood, houston, we have a problem. Usually it signifies some painful experience or loss that has been put into a drawer and that drawer has been closed in your mind. And so, yeah, even if going into some therapy when you're a young mother, before you have children, is just to remember your own childhood, so you can either repeat the good things and not repeat the bad, is quite a good thing.

Speaker 1: 52:47

Yeah, yeah. But I was even thinking, like friends of mine with you know, two healthy parents, yeah, like I don't remember like reading to your children being a thing back then, and it seems to be now, at least with the community that I surround myself in with, like the homeschool thing, that at least that is either making a comeback or starting to be a thing and and and. That's beautiful too, because you're building the connection right there and the discussion and so, if nothing else, maybe reading together and you know, and just doing that kind of like laxed play together on the floor, you know, really will start to kind of make the connections that we need and learning about it. You know, I'm like having a course for, you know, homeschoolers on the developmental stages of newborns is such a great idea.

Speaker 1: 53:39

So you work on that and I'll come back to you.

Speaker 2: 53:43

Okay.

Speaker 1: 53:44

That's a deal. What a fantastic idea to just know the psychology of it.

Speaker 2: 53:50

So we used to have I mean, it wasn't sophisticated, but when we were in high school we had home ec, yeah and yeah, but it wasn't sophisticated. It wasn't sophisticated, but when we were in high school we had home ec, yeah, yeah, but it wasn't sophisticated and it was overly simple. But you know, it could be something like that where you say, look, if you're ever going to have a family in your life, these are things that are really interesting, important to know. You know, we don't teach young people about creating and thinking about a whole life. We just are very narrow and tell them you're going to have a career, you're going to be successful, you're going to make as much money as you can, you're going to go to Disney World as many times a year as you can, you're going to have a big house, you're going to have a car, you're going to have two cars.

Speaker 2: 54:30

We don't really tell them how to have a whole and happy life. We tell them how to have a whole and happy life. We should have happiness courses in high school, and we don't do that either. And in college only Yale, I think, and maybe another university, has a happiness. Maybe Yale and Harvard have happiness courses. We don't talk about creating a whole life, and that's really a problem. We just focus on career. It's all about academic success and career. We don't talk about anything else.

Speaker 1: 54:58

Yeah, that is extremely interesting. And that does make so much sense. And even if you don't want a family?

Speaker 2: 55:06

Even if you don't want a family, I mean to say that there are other ways of being. Yeah, there are other ways of being generative. There's other ways of being creative. We all need to be creative, to be generative. It's developmental that human beings need to create. But people who don't have children can have very creative careers. They can build houses and create sort of all kinds of through their lives. Be generative. Right, you can be generative through friendships, but if you choose to have children, it's really important to be interested. Somebody has piqued your interest in what's going on, so you don't, you know, feel that nothing is going on. In those years, you really understand how very much is going on in those first three years, so important.

Speaker 1: 55:55

Oh, it really is and interesting. Erica, thank you so much for joining us here today. Where can people find you if they want to follow your work?

Speaker 2: 56:04

They can reach me at wwwkomisarcom K-O-M-I-S-A-R. That's my last name, and on that website you can reach out to me, you can buy my books, you can read articles I've written or uh see different, different podcasts that I've been on, um, and then you can follow me on Instagram, uh, erica Comis, our CSW, and and Twitter. Those are the two platforms, uh, I believe I'm on, so Great.

Speaker 1: 56:32

I will link those in the show's description and I just want to thank you so much, you're, you're the way that you are able to elaborate and explain these hard concepts. It really resonates with people and takes things that you know we take for granted and puts them in simplified terms that we can relate to and and make changes, cause you do. You do do it in a way where, um you, you can look at it and say, yeah, I might be guilty of that. What can I do to change it, as opposed to getting defensive on it.

Speaker 1: 57:05

You know we all have to just come to terms with it. We're not perfect, but, like you said before, feeling guilt is one of the best things it means. You're human and you have the ability to change right is one of the best things it means you're human and you have the ability to change right.

Speaker 2: 57:16

Nobody's perfect, but we can all be a little bit better. I suppose you could say that.

Speaker 1: 57:25

There you go. Thank you, erica. Okay, nice to meet you. Thank you. Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. If you've enjoyed what you heard and you'd like to contribute to the show, please consider leaving a small tip using the link in my show's description. Or, if you'd rather, please use the link in the description to share this podcast with a friend or on your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. Any effort to help us keep the podcast going is greatly appreciated. Thank you for tuning in and for your love of the next generation.