Fathers Teach Risk-Taking, Boundary-Setting; Learning From 'Sock Wrestling'
Fathers who spend time with their kids help instill self-control and social skills, numerous studies show, but exactly how fathers do that is a mystery. WSJ columnist Sue Shellenbarger and father of two Greg Kessler join Tanya Rivero on Lunch Break to decode the father factor. Photo: Greg Kessler By SUE SHELLENBARGER There is no question among researchers that fathers who spend time with their children instill self-control and social skills in their offspring. Exactly how dads do that, however, is largely a mystery.
Thousands of studies have sliced and diced the benefits for children of a close, nurturing bond with Mom. Researchers have a harder time analyzing the ways fathers interact with children, such as rough-and-tumble play. Some scientists are inventing new scales and laboratory procedures to try to measure the father factor. One researcher watched fathers and children playing games like "Get Up," in which fathers try to get up from the floor while the children try to hold them down, and "Sock Wrestle," in which father and child try to snatch each other's socks. Other researchers had toddlers climb down stairs in fathers' presence, in a process dubbed "Risky Situation." "Most people have a pretty well-defined sense of what it means to be a good mom, but for dads, that role is much less scripted," says University of Georgia researcher Geoffrey Brown, lead author of a 2012 study in the Journal of Family Psychology on fundamental questions about how fathers bond with children. Greg Kessler likes to roughhouse with his 7-year-old son Ezra or his 4-year-old daughter Zoe. He loves wrestling, pillow-fighting and a game they call "Big Chair, Little Chair," when he lies down, balances a child on the soles of his feet and raises and lowers the child in midair, says Mr. Kessler, a New York City photographer. His wife, Paula Trotto, believes her husband's play style will help Ezra learn to stand up for himself, but "it does baffle me" that her husband enjoys getting the children so excited, she says. At times, she adds, "I have to leave the room. It's such an intuitive thing, to not want to tolerate the sounds of your kids screaming." The primary test of attachment—a key concept in child-development research—was developed to analyze babies' bonds with mothers. This procedure, known as the "Strange Situation," has mothers briefly separate from their infants twice. Babies who are upset but readily comforted by the mother when she returns are seen as having a secure bond. Positive scores tend to sync with other measures of mothers' sensitivity and to predict better cognitive and emotional skills in children later. But when researchers put dads through the Strange Situation, the scores don't consistently predict much, and often fail to match other measures' results. Many researchers believe dad's bond is expressed a little later, when the father serves as a secure base allowing the child to explore and take risks. This is hard to study in a lab. Animal studies, however, show that baby rats deprived of rough-and-tumble are more aggressive and lack social skills as adults. In an early study at the University of Regensburg in Germany, researchers created a scale to evaluate parents' play, based on whether they challenged kids to stretch themselves, were sensitive to their emotions and encouraged them to solve problems. Mothers and fathers were observed playing with blocks or play dough with their 2-year-olds. Fathers' scores were a unique predictor of children's healthy attitudes toward relationships with others at age 16, according to the 2002 study of 49 subjects led by Karin Grossmann, a senior scientist at the university. Christopher VanDijk tunes in closely to signals from his 4-year-old son Liam that he wants to play. "He gets this mischievous look on his face, and you just kind of know," says Mr. VanDijk of Denver, an at-home dad. "We have pillow fights. And I pretend like I'm going to eat his ears. There's lots of squealing." Liam sometimes takes the lead, saying, 'I'm going to scare you, and when I say, "Boo!" you have to say, "Ahhh!" ' Mr. VanDijk also watches for signals that Liam is out-of-control or frightened. "There are times when you put on the brakes," he says. Rough-and-tumble play isn't confined to fathers. "If a mom does it, the child will learn the same thing," says Catherine Tamis-LeMonda, a professor of developmental psychology at New York University. Mr. VanDijk's wife Angie, a college administrator, often plays active superhero games with Liam. "Sometimes he needs quiet time, sometimes he needs scuffle time," she says. Fathers engage in more scuffle time on average, however. Using an adjustable carpeted ramp, researchers at New York University asked 34 parents to show how steep a slope they'd allow their babies to attempt. Some 62% of fathers said they would let their babies try a slope beyond their ability, compared with 56% of mothers, says the 2007 study co-authored by Dr. Tamis-LeMonda. Many fathers walk a fine line during play between safety and risk, allowing children to get minor injuries without endangering them, says a 2011 study of 32 subjects in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics. Researchers say this can instill emotional intelligence under fire, and an ability to take prudent risks and set limits with peers. Navdeep Singh Dhillon likes play-fighting with his 4-year-old daughter Kavya, pretending to throw a kick, teaching her how to block it, then saying, "OK, it's your turn to kick me," he says. He sometimes traps Kavya and his 4-month-old son Shaiyar in a leg lock and has Kavya "tap out," tapping him three times as a signal to release them. Mr. Dhillon of Jersey City, N.J., a college professor, says such play teaches children to set boundaries. "When they have relationships of their own, or with other kids, they'll know what is OK and what's not OK." Richard Fletcher, an Australian researcher who has studied fathers in free-form games with preschoolers, says fathers need to follow children's lead sometimes, while encouraging them to stretch themselves, and to let them win often enough to have fun—but not so often that they lose interest. Dr. Fletcher, a senior lecturer on the health and medicine faculty at the University of Newcastle, invented a scale to measure quality of play. In a study published last year in Early Child Development and Care, researchers video-recorded 26 fathers in their homes playing the games "Get Up" and "Sock Wrestle" with their 3- and 4-year-olds. Children of fathers who scored high on play quality had fewer social and behavior problems. The "Risky Situation" is a 20-minute test that assesses children's confidence to explore. Toddlers are placed in a room with their father and a stranger and allowed to play with the stranger, then to climb down a set of stairs. Toddlers who explored with confidence, while heeding limits set by their fathers, had better social and emotional skills 12 to 18 months later, according to a 2013 study co-authored by the test's creator, Daniel Paquette, an associate professor of psychoeducation at the University of Montreal in Canada. Dr. Tamis-LeMonda is video-recording daily routines of 100 New York City families. In a past study, she discovered "hall ball"— a game where "Dad throws the ball down the hallway," and the toddler brings it back, she says. "That's a natural, everyday routine we wouldn't have known about if we just brought families into the lab and said, 'Here are some toys.' " Such insights, she says, "might guide future research." Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com Sue Shellenbarger CONNECT Facebook
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It's funny. There are probably millions of dollars of government grants tied up in basic common sense.
My boys are entirely different. The older one is cerebral and focused. He has always liked play, but it comes with work. His baseball skills have improved over the years to the point that he has to take some heat off to play catch with Dad (He throws in the low 80s). I stopped sitting behind home plate without gear three years ago, after he hit me in the foot. And, he's a disciplined hitter. He is a street dancer, though he doesn't do all the acrobatic stuff. He played on the Varsity Basketball team as well as Baseball the last couple of years. And he kept with his studies well enough to graduate Salutatorian.
When he was younger, I would suplex him onto the bed. When he was little, I would toss him over my head, catching him by his ankles and, holding him upside down behind me, would walk around asking, "Where's Patrick? Where's the boy?" He loved it, but my Aunt didn't. She yelled at my mother after witnessing that one.
Anyways, he's been recruited by the President of the College that he is about to attend, and will head to Costa Rica on another mission trip. I'd say, he has a fair tolerance for risk.
His younger brother has Asperger's. He and I were at odds when he was real young over my wife's affections. He would kick me in the shin randomly, stuff like that. In the last few years, we have also bonded over baseball. Some of you may remember my posting pics of him taking batting practice at Fenway Park when he was eight. He now plays competitive baseball (He was in a "Challenger" program - a sort of T-Ball for differently abled kids), and enjoys calling me "Coach Richard," even at home. He is a better hitter, overall, than his brother was at this age, though he's had points where he won't swing, and fielding is tough for him. He will stop a ball and, after a quick look, throw to a base, but if he doesn't actually get a person out, he has "lost." Even if he understands that, by stopping the ball and keeping it out of the infield, he has still not "won" on that play, and that can affect the rest of the game for him.
Josh and I missed out on the roughhousing when he was younger, though we occasionally will roughouse now. It is difficult sometimes, because things are easier to break when you're five feet tall and some eighty pounds. He can also change attitude on a dime, so one has to be careful there, too. He is a heck of a Minecraft player, from what I can tell, and he and his sister, as well as other friends, spend enough time in that world. He even printed out foldable MC figures, glued them to cardboard, cut them out and put them together as gifts for a coworker of my wife's, who also plays MC. So, as far as girls are concerned, he's hitting on one more than twice his age. I guess that's taking some risk.
My girls are becoming mysteries to me, however....
