Mark Tebbs: Hello and welcome to Mind The Kids. I'm your host, Mark Tebbs. I've spent my whole career working in mental health services in various guises from frontline service provision to being director of mental health commissioning. I'm currently chief executive of a charity. So I'm really interested in grassroots organizations and how we really make community impact. In each episode we talk to researchers and practitioners about their research. It's an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the latest research in child and adolescent mental health. Probably today the most important qualification from my perspective is being a parent because today we're going to be talking about parental monitoring. I'm delighted to be joined by Isabel Aks: and William Pelham from the University of California to discuss parental monitoring in an episode that's called monitoring versus knowing, rethinking the parent-child dynamics. Isabel and William have recently published their paper in JCPP Advances and we are going to dive into a conversation with them now. Isabel, could you tell us a little bit about...where you're based, I know you're in the States, and a little bit of your research interests.
Isabel Aks: Yeah, for sure. So I'm Isabel. I currently live in California, in San Diego specifically, and I work at UC San Diego as a staff research associate. I graduated from UCLA a few years ago with a degree in cognitive science and a computing specialization, and I've kind of been riding the wave on psychology research since then and will continue to in the future because I'm going to graduate school next year to get my PhD in clinical psychology.
Mark Tebbs: Excellent, really lovely to meet you. Will, same question.
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah, so I'm a clinical child psychologist and I'm here at UC San Diego. And I'm a professor, so I do research. And then also I'm a clinician. So I see kids, teens and families in our psychiatry clinic here at UCSD.
Mark Tebbs: Great stuff. So I think with this podcast, I think we'll probably divide up into kind of two halves. So the first half, we'll be talking about parental monitoring generally, and then we'll kind of dive a little bit more into the kind of specifics of your paper. So I guess as part of the preparation for the podcast, I was talking to my son and he's finished his university and I was talking about parental monitoring and he said well that's just spying isn't it, that's when you're spying on us dad. So could you just tell us what parental monitoring actually is and what it looks like in that kind of everyday
Isabel Aks: Yeah, for sure. I'm really glad you brought that up because I feel like when we say parental monitoring, it sounds like this official technical term for spying. That's really funny. But you know, really, it's actually a lot more casual than that. It's things that parents are already doing. Most parents already do like every day. Basically, we're just referring to like anything a parent does to get information or to know something about their child's life. So it can be as simple as asking your child about what they're doing today. You can find out how they're doing in school by looking at a school report. You can get to know their friend. So very casual things. doesn't necessarily have to be like going into their room and looking at what they're doing or spying on them.
Mark Tebbs: Perfect, okay, that's a great example. So I guess the other thing that I had the conversation with my son about was he disclosed some of the things that I didn't know about from kind of, from his childhood. And I guess I imagined that
Mark Tebbs: There's some kind of tensions around parental monitoring, particularly in those teen years when there's some of those higher risk behaviors. So is parental monitoring like a common cause of tension?
Isabel Aks: Yeah, also a great question. I'm not a parent myself, but I've also had lots of conversations with my mom about this. And a huge, you know, tension within the parent is like, how do I balance supporting my child's autonomy, their independence, but then also making sure that they know that they're safe and that they're taken care of and giving off the impression that I actually care about their life, right? So there's always going to be that to juggle. So to your question, think in some cases, for sure, it can cause a little bit of tension if the parent and the kid aren't really aligned on what's going on. So if the kid feels like, okay, my parents looking a little bit too much into what I'm doing, they're tracking my location too much, why does this need to happen? But of course, in other cases, it can be super beneficial and actually lead to some positive lines of communication between the parent and the child.
Mark Tebbs: Will, did you want to jump in there?
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah, So it's a great question. It's always a balancing act. And I hope, Mark, whatever you found out didn't scare you too much from your son there. So I think it's easy to say at one end of the spectrum or the other, right? As a parent, if your son had never done anything you didn't know about, that would probably mean you were a little too intense, right? On the other hand, lot of the families I work with in clinic, part of the issue is it's gotten kind of out of control what the teenager is involved in and what the parent's aware of. So it's a balancing act. And that's part of why Isabel was getting it in the paper here.
Mark Tebbs: Yeah and I guess it's it was really interesting Isabel started that response about talking to your mum and I imagine that parental monitoring has changed quite a lot there's a like there's a generational shift is that what you kind of is that what you found?
Isabel Aks: Yeah, I mean, definitely. think, you know, when my mom was a kid, it was all about, okay, you know, lay out your plan. If you're going out with friends, tell me about it, right? And then I'll hear about it when you get back. Now we have all of these new digital means of getting information about your kid, tracking their location, texting them while they're out, getting like real live updates on what they're doing, right? So it looks very different now than it used to, and I'm sure it will continue to. to change and evolve over time. And that's why I think it's really important, you know, in this paper, we're sort of trying to like figure out a way to study parental monitoring in a very specific programmatic way. And of course, the way that we study parental monitoring is going to change depending on the type and form of monitoring, right? Like as we go on.
Mark Tebbs: Is there any advice around how parents can reach that balance? Is there rule of thumb around how that balance is reached?
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah, I think it's a great question, Mark, and I wish there were a simple answer, where I could say, do exactly this. All depends on the kid, the situation, and the parent, right? One of your other questions, though, kind of goes to the way I think about, which is you asked about trust, right? And I think of trust as kind of the foundation. Why is trust important? I mean, one,
Isabel Aks: Sure, we can go back and forth.
Prof. William Pelham: One of the main ways as a parent that you can monitor is talking to your teen, right? Asking them how they're feeling, what's going on in their life, right? If they don't trust you, you're not gonna get a lot of useful things out of a conversation like that. So that's kind of the bedrock trust. It also goes the other way where as a parent, if you don't trust your teen, that's also gonna make it hard to monitor, right? Because you're gonna be really tempted to go to... what the word you used at the beginning, Mark, the kind of snoop snooping, right? We attempted to go more toward that, be less respectful of kind of privacy and dependence. If you feel like you just can't really trust what they're telling you, you can't trust them to make good decisions. So when you ask about where to fall, how do I have balance, you know, granting independence and privacy and also monitoring that to keep them safe, I go back to do we have trust going both ways in the relationship? As long as we have that, maybe we're some we're in a good spot in middle.
Mark Tebbs: Yeah, I think that's incredibly helpful and it really resonates with my parenting experience. I was kind of, think our monitoring behavior kind of shifted as, you know, the changes that our children were going through and kind of like the level of concerns we had. But I guess at the heart of it, we were trying to, you know, provide as much kind of freedom as possible whilst kind of keeping them safe. But it kind of felt like a very dynamic changing process.
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah, as you say that, Mark, actually, maybe I'll take that answer from you and use that in the clinic, because I like that way of thinking about it. Your goal is to give the most freedom you can. Right? And then the way you ramp down is only what do need to do to keep them safe? And like you said for some, or as I mentioned earlier, depends on the teen and the situation. You just spoke about a thing that's true of all teens, which is age. The way we monitor a 12-year-old would be very different than the way we monitor an 18-year-old. If it doesn't change, that's a problem. We're not getting our teenager ready to go out in the world and be independent.
Mark Tebbs: Yeah. I'm wondering what happens, you you must see this in the clinic, sort of like when, when that trust breaks down and what impact that has on, the parental monitoring.
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah, it's a, I would say by the time I see families in the clinic, it's almost always a big issue. The trust has been broken, right? And not just trust, but there's a lot of conflict around the monitoring, right? So whenever the parent is trying to do it, it's pretty annoying to the teen, right? It feels... know, invasive and bad. And then for the parent, the trust is broken down where they don't really trust that the teen is telling them the truth, for example, like about what's going on or what their plans are. So it's often the first thing we do in therapy is work on that. And if you were a parent who's feeling that way, I think that's really a time to think about getting professional help, right? Because rebuilding trust is something that can be hard to do just the two of you, right? But sometimes having a third person in the room, know, pursuing family therapy where it's you, your teenager and the therapist all in the room talking together, just a little bit of kind of help with the mediation sometimes can be what gets the ball rolling back the other direction, right? Until we're rebuilding trust. We're getting to a place where as a parent, I can grant more independence and, you know, privacy. And as a teen, I can trust mom or dad's doing this for the right reasons rather than, you know, just because they, you know, don't like what I'm doing.
Mark Tebbs: Yeah, that's really, really helpful and great advice. I suppose I'm thinking about all of the pressures that families kind of face, you know, we see it a lot in our charity work, the kind of pressures of poverty and work and a breakup of relationships. So I'm just wondering how parents can still foster that open communication in those really trying situations.
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah, it's a great question. I'll say a little bit and then I don't know, Isabel if you want to add to this. the first thing I would say to families in that sort of situation, and hopefully this is reassuring, is in our studies, it doesn't look like what matters is like the sheer amount of monitoring. It doesn't seem to be what's important is like you asked a certain thing a certain number of times, you monitor really intensely. What seems to be more important is that you were sort of intentional or thoughtful or strategic about what you did. So when I work in the clinic with families who are in that situation, a lot of other stuff going on, a of other stressors, my mind goes to prioritization. What can we pick out that feels sustainable for you, for your situation as strategies for monitoring? The other thing I would say is don't be afraid to ask for help. So monitoring is a team job, especially as your team gets older, you're gonna have less and less time where you're actually with them. And there's a lot of other people in their life, friends, siblings, teachers, coaches, neighbors, all of these people are people that can help both in understanding what's going on in your teen's life and then also supporting you and kind of balancing one more responsibility in terms of all the other, on top of all the other things going on in your life as a parent.
Isabel Aks: Yeah. I think what you said about intentionality is really important. I would also say, you know, as you hear Will talking, you can kind of get the sense like, we don't know exactly, like it's not a one size fits all situation, you know, there's a lot going on with a lot of different families. People are in different situations, have different backgrounds, right? So the common line here, what's really important is just that you're trying. and parents are going to make mistakes know, parents might have to ramp up their monitoring or reel it in, and that will change and adapt with the situation and with the family. So, you know, if it feels hard, it's because it is. Like, we're still figuring this out as researchers, and parents are still figuring it out as parents. But what really matters is just that you're trying and you're giving off the impression to your child that you really care.
Mark Tebbs: Yeah, I love that response because I think there can be lot of fears of getting it wrong and that kind of stopping people trying but actually the kind of the effort, the connection feels like it's, at the heart of what, part of the benefit of parental monitoring is that care.
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah, and it's trial and error even as the therapist, right? So many times I suggest to parent, go home and try this and it comes back, didn't work at all. So that's part of the process and figuring out what works for you and your family.
Mark Tebbs: Okay. Let's turn a little bit more to your paper, the essence of paper seems to be the concept of parental monitoring has been reconceptualized over time. It's changed a lot over the last 50 years. So could you unpack that for us a little?
Isabel Aks: So, you know, what's really important to keep in mind through this is just that, you 50 years ago, people thought parental monitoring was important. And today, obviously, we still think it's pretty important. So that aspect hasn't changed. It's a timeless concept. What's changed more is how people study and conceptualize parental monitoring. So in 2000, a pair of landmark papers came out and basically shifted the focus away from what the parent is actually doing, so these things like asking your kid about their day and stuff like that, to the actual knowledge and things that a parent has in their mind about their kid. And it might seem like a subtle shift, but now the field has kind of centered more on this study of parental knowledge, so the things that a parent knows, rather than the things that a parent does.
And the point of this paper is really just trying to shift that focus back to things that the parent can actually control in order to give some good recommendations for parents about what to do in order to foster that sense of trust that Will was talking about earlier.
Mark Tebbs: Okay, so can you tell us a little bit more why this distinction's so important between what a parent does and what a parent...
Isabel Aks: For sure. you know, monitoring as we define it is something a parent does to gain knowledge. So knowledge is part of it, right? It's part of the motivation. But it doesn't only function to give a parent knowledge. It can also function to give off a sense of care from the parent to the kid. And why that's so important is, you know, for example, you know, during the course of a day, a parent might ask their kid, okay, like, How's your day going? Who are you hanging out with? That might function to give a parent knowledge. But over time, if the parent's consistently asking the kid, how's your day going? How are your friends? It shows the kid, okay, like my parents involved in my life, my parent cares about me. And that goes towards a longer establishment of trust over time. And so it's not actually necessarily the knowledge that a parent gains from asking those questions. It's really the impression that they're giving off.
Mark Tebbs: Yeah, because I guess there's times, I suppose I'm thinking about my parenting again, I think there's times where, maybe I was given misinformation, but there's still the process of asking was building the bond and attachment with my children. Is that part of what your research has been uncovering?
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah, that's a really good example, Mark. And one way to think about it is like, what's successful monitoring? Right? So if monitoring was all just about finding out information, then like in your example, it didn't work, right? Because you didn't get, you know, true information. You got misinformation. I like that word. In our kind of sense of it, we wouldn't call that a failure. We would say another reason monitoring is important is just because the message it sends to your team, that you care about what's going on in their life. That that can have its own impact that's healthy, independent of, maybe you didn't find out all the details about what happened or what went on.
Mark Tebbs: How has this kind of reconceptualisation changed the research field? What was the implication of this change in direction?
Isabel Aks: Well, you know, I think it really changes how we study monitoring and how we assess it. So, you know, if we think of monitoring as the same thing as knowledge, which is the thing we're moving away from, but if we think of it that way, then we could just ask a parent, okay, you know, what do you know about your kid's life? And that would be the only way to assess monitoring. But if we think about it more as, you know, as as these like attempts by the parent and behaviors that the parent does, then we can get really specific with what we're measuring. So we can say, you know, what did you do today to get this information? You what sort of things did you say to your child? Did you track their location? When did you do that? And if we have these more specific ways of measuring monitoring, then we can see how that impacts the youth's behavior.
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah, I'll add to that a little bit. And this one I might do a retake mark because this is kind of the crux point, thinking of how to explain it. So your question mark was sort of, what's the point of the reconceptualization? Or like, why does it matter, kind of, Switching to knowledge. OK.
Isabel Aks: Yeah.
Prof. William Pelham: I think it goes back to kind of what we call a success or how we figure out what is effective monitoring. Earlier we were talking about all the challenging trade-offs and tricky stuff involved as a parent. It's not a simple one-size-fits-all thing. When the field moved toward thinking of the goal of monitoring as solely to get knowledge, to find out information, that that's what makes it successful. That's steered a lot of the research toward, okay, what strategies of monitoring give you the most knowledge, right? We're saying the way we want to think about it is instead, what strategies of monitoring set your team up for the best adjustment, the best success, the best healthy development, right? It's a different question. It sounds similar, but it's a pretty different kind of philosophy of what are we trying to do in the research, not just to find out information about what's going on in the team's life, but to set them up for broader success.
Mark Tebbs: Okay, so it feels like it's much more about the impact and the relationship rather than actually an information exchange or how do you gather information? Because I guess, especially with technology, there's lots of ways of gathering information that increase knowledge but don't necessarily do that bonding and attachment aspect that you're describing there.
Prof. William Pelham: So, yeah. Yeah.
Isabel Aks: Yeah. Exactly. think, you know, like there might be cases where a parent goes on Find My iPhone and sees where their kid is, but the kid has no knowledge of that at all. Right. So that doesn't really affect the kid or maybe like the parents, you know, repeatedly doing that does affect the kid. You know, we don't really know. But if the kid doesn't, if the kid doesn't know about it, then that sort of like changes how we study it too. Right. So we're assessing it both from the parents and the child's perspectives as well.
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah, the example of those phone apps, so like the real popular one is Life360, or find my iPhone, a lot of people use on the iPhones. One way to think about it again when we go back to knowledge is like knowing where your kid is is like the most basic form of monitoring like is about what's going on for 50 years, people want to talk about that. One way to look at it is it's all about knowledge. When those apps started and we could track the phone, did that totally solve the problem? No, right, because I might be able to see a little dot on the map about where he is, but I want to know more than that, right? I want to know who is he with? What is he up to? Why is he there? Right. So again, think thinking about that example shows or supports our kind of broader idea of monitoring is about more than like literally knowing where your teenager is on a map.
Mark Tebbs: Yeah, I think that example really brings it into clear focus, doesn't it? You can know where your child is for a nap, but actually some of those kind of anxieties and the issue of safety is probably not necessarily totally resolved by having that knowledge.
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah, and on the, we haven't brought this up yet, but I think there's, I also hear from parents that these changes of technology have also changed like kind of my expectations of myself as a parent, right? It used to be without this technology, there was just kind of no way to know this level of detail about where my teenager was at all moments. And that almost now having the technology has changed what I feel responsible to do in a way that some parents say is kind of overwhelming. There's so much to possibly, there's so many possible things I could do and I only have so much time or energy.
Isabel Aks: Yeah, and I think also going back to one of your early questions about like, you know, autonomy being a little bit like too involved. You know, some of the stuff that we've found is actually like parents want to be doing more of this sort of monitoring and kids sort of take it as kind of a given nowadays that you share your location with mom and dad. So the lines of like, what is invasive and what's not become very blurry once, especially technology is taken into the equation.
Mark Tebbs: And do we have a sense of how that is linked to child development and wellbeing? Do we have a kind of sense of whether this is, you know, whether this feels like this increased monitoring is a force for good or not?
Prof. William Pelham: I think my answer Mark would be that's a really great question and unfortunately we don't have good answers. Some of these technologies have gotten popular very recently and move very quickly. So we just talked about kind of the location tracking on the phone. Another one we hear about all the time is what my teenager is doing online, social media. And because the technologies move so quickly, the research really hasn't kept up with it. So I think unfortunately we're a little bit behind in terms of being able to say, for example, for what your team does online, what you should do, this is going to work best. We can make some guesses based on research we've done before, you know, that kind of general monitoring of what your team is up to, but when it comes to the technology stuff, there's a lot to be learned still.
Mark Tebbs: I think it's a really difficult space for parents to be in at the moment actually, where they find that balance in a world that's changing very quickly.
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah, and when we do these studies, like we just finished when we were interviewing parents about like how they're approaching this right now, monitoring what their team does online. And we meet parents and hear answers that are at totally opposite ends of the spectrum. Right. So parents who tell us, I don't even give my teenager a smartphone, right, because I'm so concerned about how would I really know what's going on, all the way to parents who say, to me, that's way too much of an invasion of privacy, to be thinking about what are they doing online, what's happening in their social media accounts. So I think that speaks to there aren't a lot of good answers right now, where parents are doing such different strategies.
Isabel Aks: Thanks. Yeah, I think, advice or sort of the good news about all of this is that, you know, adaptability is really important in regular monitoring and monitoring online. In a lot of cases, you know, one of the difficulties is like if we're measuring monitoring, we don't know where this monitoring is coming from. So did it get started because the parent was just like, I want to structure my kid's environment? Or did the kid do something and then the parents like, I have to monitor it. And so like going back to the technology thing, I think, you know, in a lot of cases, some parents are like, I don't even want to touch it. I don't even want to go there. But also like once your kid, if your kid sees something or if your kid does something online, parents will typically react to it. So like keeping your mind open and keeping your options open and making sure that you're being super adaptable as a parent is really important both in the real world and adapting to these online things that honestly a lot of parents might not have knowledge of until their kid goes on.
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah, and I think it also, what Isabel was just saying, speaks to your question earlier about how to strike the balance, Mark. And now I'm forgetting what Isabel said that made me think of that. Isabel, can you remind me what you're saying? definitely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. Yeah, so what Isabel just said, think, also goes back to your question earlier, Mark, about how do you strike the balance?
Isabel Aks: Adaptability responding to what your kid does.
Prof. William Pelham: And I think something we can confidently say is that good monitoring is matched to kind of the level of concern for your child. And so if your child or teenager has just never done anything at all that's risky or concerning or potentially dangerous, I wouldn't be suggesting to you to do really intense monitoring, right? You always want to match. And sometimes over time, your child gets older and changes interests, activities you might need to increase the monitoring you might need to decrease the monitoring rather than it's like pick one thing and do it forever
Mark Tebbs: Yeah, again, I think that's great advice. sometimes I think we're looking for really clear guidance. You know, if I do this, then everything would be okay. But it feels like it's much more, dynamic and changeable and that process of assessing risk and kind of like where the child's at is an ongoing changing process.
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah, and your listeners who have more than one kid already know this, right? Because they're realizing they don't do exactly the same thing for each of their kids, right? So parents have an intuitive sense of the need to adapt and match, and we would just encourage them to lean into that.
Mark Tebbs: I'm just wondering about, you you said that the research field was still catching up with some of this. I'm just wondering whether you've got any further research planned or are you aware of any other research that's happening in the field that's going to come online soon?
Isabel Aks: Yeah, well, Will has been doing a lot of very programmatic work on parental monitoring recently. So we started off writing this pretty big paper on our conceptualization of parental monitoring and sort of laying out some foundational principles for how we can study it. And so I think that is a huge push towards really thinking about this in a specific way because as we've alluded to throughout this conversation, it really changes from family to family and situation to situation. So having a very detailed understanding is really important. In terms of our studies, we've got a lot going on in the future, I think. I mean, we've written a few IRBs and proposals to study parental monitoring in different ways. We have this one study that we just launched that's looking at a specific night out of a teen and the specific things a parent does throughout the course of just one night out, so like a Saturday or a Friday, and then how the parent's collecting information and making an effort with their kid. And we're linking that to different things like adolescent disclosure of information. So that's just an example of a cool, specific way that we're measuring these monitoring actions.
Mark Tebbs: I love it, that sounds really interesting to bring it down into a case study of what it looks like.
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah, so we're really interested in this topic and doing some of own research. And I would say the good news when I talked earlier about we know less about like the digital monitoring, that's a really active research space. So actually even in the UK and Europe, think that some of the best research right now, people doing research on. Sometimes it's called digital parenting to mean kind of all the stuff that falls into that bucket. And I think if we do the podcast again in five years, there'll probably be a lot more to talk about.
Mark Tebbs: Also just wondering whether there's, any kind of policy or system impacts of your work? Is there anything you'd kind of like to change at maybe more strategic policy level?
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah, it depends, Mark, on kind of which system you're talking about in that question. I could give you an example of one that I think is a really helpful cross-system policy and that has changed since the beginning of my career which is, at least in the US now, a lot of schools have online grade books. So as a parent, you can log in and see, you know, this is how my teenager's doing in different classes, these are assignments that have or haven't been turned in, these are test grades. And when I started my career, that was like a part-time job for parents, like when they had a middle school or high schooler who struggling at school, emailing, calling six, seven different teachers, trying to get replies. So the school setting up those grade books has made a lot of parents' lives so much easier on that monitoring front. On the other hand, I also work with parents who say, yes, we have electronic grade book, but the information in it is completely out of date or wrong. So it might be only at the very end of the quarter, suddenly I see all these missing assignments pop up that got up with the last second. So in that case, it's worse than nothing, because you, as a parent, thought, from there, everything was going great the whole quarter. So I think any system that works with kids and teenagers, something they can do to help parents with monitoring is make it easy to routinely get trustworthy info about how things are going. And I think the more that that part of monitoring can be taken off parents plate, the more parents can spend that energy on the trust, the relationship, the communication rather than just like getting basic information.
Isabel Aks: Yeah. I also think just in general, changing the way that we talk about this kind of stuff is also really important. It was funny that example that you brought up at the beginning of the podcast of like you mentioning parental monitoring to your kid and then thinking that it's spying or snooping. know, like it's a funny example, but also it kind of gets at the way some people think about parental monitoring is like this like bad word, I don't know if I want to mess with my kids' autonomy, their independence, know, where's the line? But opening up conversations like this and thinking of it as just a way to build that trust and a way to, you know, have love and communication in your relationships is really important across the board, you know, for schools and for parenting programs and for policymaking.
Prof. William Pelham: That's a great, great point, Isabel. And what I'm kind of concluding, Mark, is we need a rebrand of the term better than monitoring because it's a little bit, there's some sort of stigma around it, right? Like it's a bad thing to do. So we'll have to think about that. I don't know if you have ideas, Mark, of what we should call it instead.
Mark Tebbs: We'll have to speak to the ACAMH marketing team, see if they can come up with a rebrand for parental monitoring. Yeah, but I agree. It does have those connotations of snooping and something kind of that's invasive. But actually what you're talking about is, you know, his relationship and trust and, yeah. So it's not that. So yeah, rebranding sounds like a good idea.
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah. Yeah, an analogy sometimes I use with parents in clinic, you know, is if you think about your own relationships, like your husband, your wife, if every day you came home and you never asked at all what happened in their day, right, that would be sending a message, right? It's not so much you have to know every single little thing, but that muntring is about more than just information, right? It's about relationships.
Mark Tebbs: Yeah .Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that example kind of brings home the balance bit as well. Kind of like you wouldn't want your relationship to be monitoring your every movement either. Okay, look, we're coming to the end of the podcast. I just wonder whether there's any kind of like final kind of take home message for our listeners.
Prof. William Pelham: Yeah.
Isabel Aks: Sure, yeah. I think coming back to some of the main points here, it's really important as a parent to be intentional and thoughtful with monitoring. So what does that look like? If you're not doing any monitoring at all, maybe start doing a little bit more. If the monitoring doesn't seem to be effective, maybe change up a tactic. And going back to a point from earlier, like if it feels hard, if you're starting to feel discouraged, It's because it is a hard thing to do to strike that balance we've been talking about. So just try, just keep trying. And the more you try, the more you're sending the message, as Will said, that you care and that you want a good relationship with your kid.
Mark Tebbs: Thank you so much. Great final send-off message. It's been really lovely speaking to you both. I hope our listeners have enjoyed the podcast. If you enjoyed the podcast then please leave a review and subscribe to the ACAMH podcast. Thank you very much.
Prof. William Pelham: Thank you, Mark. Pleasure.
Isabel Aks: Thanks.