Parenting by Age | S.17 Ep.1

Parenting by Age is a season of growth that walks families through the parenting journey—from newborns to emerging adults. Blending real-life stories with expert insights, this episode offers research-based guidance to help parents understand development, set realistic expectations, and enjoy each stage along the way.

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Welcome to The Science of Parenting podcast, where we connect you with research based information that fits your family. We'll talk about the realities of being a parent and how research can help guide parenting decisions. I'm Mackenzie Dejong-Schelling, podcast co-host, and I'm a parenting educator. My co-host today, as we begin this season, is our colleague in health and human sciences and our friend Hailey Walker. You might remember Hailey from our last season during that stop brief talk section. As a refresher, Hailey is a fellow parenting educator with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach and a mom of three. Yes, now I am a mom of three. I will get to go into more detail in the next episode about becoming a mom of three and having a new baby in our house. But for now, I will just share that I am also a health and human sciences educator like Mackenzie, but I cover counties in southern Iowa. And I'm super excited to be sharing the reins with McKenzie today as we introduce Season 17 of The Science of Parenting. We are so, so excited to be back, and I am excited to chat with you, Hailey, both in this episode and in our next episode. So we'll get a little bit of Hailey throughout the next two episodes. For, for our listeners this season, we are doing something a little bit different. Similar, but different to what we've done in the past. And that's going to be a mash up of age focused parenting insights and some expert interviews for those ages. Yeah, we're walking through the parenting journey by age, from newborns to emerging adults, and we're asking questions like,“what's happening developmentally?”“What's it like to parent at that stage, and what support do families need as they're going through it?” Yes, so for infants, for example, we'll talk about baby proofing and safety as they start exploring for our preschool and elementary kids. We'll dive into STEM like learning at home, in school and those out of school activities. We'll talk to Dr. Sarah Nelson, our state 4-H STEM specialist. Yeah, and then we're going to tackle preteens and teens and peer pressure, growing bodies, fueling up for sports and activities. Jody Gatewood will be here to join us to share her experience parenting through that phase. Yes, and then finally, we'll explore that emerging adulthood. What it's like to parent kids who are launching into the world and maybe even becoming parents themselves. Yeah, each episode highlights the joys and the challenges of parenting at different ages, with practical tips and expert insights to help families thrive. So, something that I do want to share with our listeners as we prepare for this season, this is not the first time that we've looked at children's ages and parenting stages. You're probably like, “yeah, we've we've talked about this before,” but we're just going to continue the conversation. If you've been with us for a while, you know, we love to look at topics by different ages. You know, we we've done that in quite a few of our seasons, and especially recently we've done it through things like literacy and nutrition and finance, all sorts of things looking by age. And we're back in season five, we took a deep dive into the parenting stages. So I would encourage you all to go back and listen to that season. Or, you know, if you're like,“I don't want to go listen, a whole nother season” before I listen to this season, that's okay, too. Go back and find one that applies to you by age. If you have preschoolers, listen to the preschool episode. If you have teenagers, listen to that episode. But do keep in mind, as you listen to those episodes, that the CDC recommendations have been adjusted since then. It's been a little while since those episodes were recorded, so we would also encourage you to look at those recommendations to see, you know, what's suggested here in 2025. Yeah, that being said, as we prepare to chat across these parenting stages with parents and with experts, we want to remind you of what all those stages include so you don't have to do any additional work before jumping into our Season 17 episodes. Absolutely. So you can go back and listen to those, but we'll give you a little teaser of everything here in this episode. So let's remind our listeners that every child develops at their own pace, and temperament does play a huge role in when we hit milestones. So that's why we say that those milestones are guidelines, not deadlines. Yes, and when parents understand what's typical for each age, they tend to have more realistic expectations and way fewer power struggles. Absolutely. So, we're going to actually dive into those six parenting stages from Ellen Galinsky. And it'll kind of get us all on the same page as we start our conversation this season. Yeah. Each stage aligns with a child's age in the developmental phase, and it reflects how we as parents evolve in our roles also. Absolutely. So let's walk through them. The first one is the image making stage. This is before we even have kids. It's that dreamy, somewhat, you know, sometimes unrealistic vision of what parenting will be like. I'm actually in this stage myself. I don't have any kids of my own yet, so I'm in this stage, you know, I'm looking at what do I think it'll be like as a parent? What sorts of values will we have as a family? What activities you think they'll get into? What sorts of things we'll do together? What sorts of traditions or rituals we’ll implement? So much more, that kind of goes into painting that picture of what parenting could look like. Yeah. So sweet. Then comes the nurturing stage during infancy we’re bonding, feeding, soothing and basically learning how to function on very little sleep. This is actually this stage that I'm in right now with my youngest. You know, she's starting to hold her head up, giggling, reacting to us. And I love getting to see her experience something new every day. And if you know me, you know how emotional I can get. So I'm not going to talk too much about her right now. But we will get to dive deeper into what that looks like for me to parent a baby. And we'll talk about toddlers too in the next episode. Absolutely. I'm excited to chat with you more about this stage of life that you're in. And speaking of those toddlers, as we talk about what we're going to talk about in the next episode. Talk about what we're going to talk about. That's repetitive, isn't it? Next is that authority stage. It's when toddlers start exploring, they start testing those boundaries. And we, the parents, become rule makers and safety enforcers. Like you said, we'll talk about this in the next two episodes, and we'll talk about what it looks like to parent at this stage. And then in episode three, actually, our colleague Rachel Sweeney from AnswerLine is going to join us and chat about baby proofing. So what does that look like to make your home safe as these toddlers start to be on the move? Yes. Then middle childhood brings the interpretive stage. Kids are engaging with the world beyond home, and we're helping them make sense of it all. These are the years of preschool and elementary school. In this stage, our kids are becoming so many things, right? Scientists, musicians, athletes and so much more. And they're figuring out their place, you know, in their classroom and beyond. My seven year old is in this stage, and as a parent, it has been really challenging for me just to watch her interacting with the world in a new way, and for me to not project my own insecurities onto her as she's growing up. Melissa Wagner will get to share more about what that stage looks like for her as well. Yes, and experiencing it in different ways. Once we go through that interpretive stage, then we get to the interdependent stage. So this is where we say hello to those pre-teen and teenage years. We get to start, well, our kids, right, the teenage and pre-teens, get to start negotiating power. They're renegotiating what they get to do those roles. They get more autonomy. They're making so many decisions for themselves at this age. And we know that parents have set them up to do that successfully, but we're there to support them. You're there to support them when those decisions are tough so you can back them up even when things don't go as planned. And then finally the departure stage. This is the stage that we often refer to as emerging adulthood. So young adults are leaving home and parents are reflecting on their journey so far. Who their child's become, who they themselves become. As a parent myself, but also as a daughter, I know that in this stage and beyond, the parenting continues. Parents are helping their children navigate those adult decisions and eventually potentially supporting their adult children as they become parents themselves. As our colleague and friend Cindy Thompson will share in a later episode. Yeah, so that gets us through all of the stages of parenting, and we will be revisiting those with the research that our expert colleagues bring, as well as about reality of parents who are in some of these stages, like Hailey is. Our main goal, and sharing things this way, is because, through the decades, one of the biggest takeaways in research is the parents who understand child development have more realistic expectations. Yes, and that leads to better interactions and less frustration and more effective parenting strategies. It's important to also remember that every child is developing at their own pace. Even siblings that are raised in the same home, seemingly the same way, can be wildly different. And that's why we emphasize a realistic, research based approach, not a one size fits all strategy. Absolutely. So whether you're parenting a newborn, elementary, teen, young adult through the ages, this season is for you. Yes, we are here to bridge that gap between research and reality so you can parent with confidence and effectiveness and even enjoy the ride while you're at it. Absolutely. So thank you to our listeners for being here with us on The Science of Parenting this season. We are excited for it. It's going to be a fun one. I'm just personally excited to chat with all of our colleagues, about their experiences. So don't forget that you can subscribe to us on Apple, Spotify, your favorite podcast app, whatever that might be. And if you prefer watching your podcast, that's kind of the thing these days, right? You can also find us on YouTube at the Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Health and Human Sciences page. I know that's a long one, but you can find us there. So and as always. Come along as we tackle the ups and downs, the ins and outs and the research and the reality all around. The Science of Parenting. The Science of Parenting is a research-based education program hosted by Mackenzie DeJong-Schelling, produced and edited by Brock Beirman, with contributions from Barbara Dunn-Swanson, Dr. Connie Beecher, Hailey Walker, and Morgan Newell. Send in questions and comments to parenting@iastate.edu and connect with us on Facebook. This program is brought to you by Iowa State University Extension and Outreach.