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Asked by anon-204913 to Sally, Louise on 4 Mar 2019.
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Louise Rodgers answered on 4 Mar 2019:
It definitely has for me – my poor children are guinea pigs at home whenever I am trying out a new intervention and they have recently been helping me test an app we are developing for use in Precision Teaching. I think they are thoroughly fed up of spelling common exception words and doing times tables now!
In terms of what kind of parent it makes me, I was talking to a colleague about this recently and she said, ‘I can’t teach my children how to cook, but at least they have good emotional literacy!’ Hopefully, because I think and talk about emotions and spend a lot of time thinking about how children feel in general, this is true of my children too. I think psychology, feelings and mental life are all very important so I make time for that in family life. Psychology has also helped me to reflect on my own childhood and what was good and not so good about it. I got this book with for Christmas for both of my children (aged 7 and 9) https://www.amazon.co.uk/My-Hidden-Chimp-author-Paradox/dp/1787413713/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1551706559&sr=8-1&keywords=my+inner+chimp which is great fun … but my youngest one did tell me she would rather have had a Mr Frosty!
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Sally Tilt answered on 4 Mar 2019:
Yes for sure – I’d actually say that being a psychologist has an impact on my being a parent, a friend, a daughter … once you learn a particular way of looking at the world it’s kind of difficult not to see everything through the same lens. You may have heard of the ‘White Bear paradox’ – this is the idea that if I say ‘WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT THINK ABOUT A WHITE BEAR’ – chances are that as soon as you read this, the thing that popped into your head is a white bear. Psychologists have shown that it is really difficult to suppress a thought (like the thought of a white bear), and in fact if we try to do so, we actually think even more about that thing. So this helps me to make sense about seeing the world through a psychology lens – if I tried not to apply psychology to my life outside work, it probably wouldn’t work – it would likely pop into my head even more.
In relation to parenting – I probably end up talking a lot more about what thoughts we are all having than I otherwise might – and it is nice to have some suggestions for my children to try out if they have a difficult or stressful situation to deal with.
I enjoyed reading Louise’s answer – I’m kind of with her children though – Mr Frosty was always on my Christmas list, but unfortunately I didn’t ever get one!
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