S2E2: Helping Kids Navigate Stress
Welcome to This Is Oregon, a podcast where we take you inside research happening at the University of Oregon and show you how it applies to your everyday life. I’m Kira Wilson, your host for this episode. Our guest for this episode is Dr. Sunny Bay, assistant professor of children’s behavioral health and psychology, whose research team is taking a look at children experiencing stressors and what that means for everyday parent child interactions. Sunny, thank you so much for joining us. You describe yourself as a family scientist who’s especially interested in day-to-day realities of family life. Can you tell us more about what that looks like in your research and why studying the everyday is so important? Sure. So, conceptually, what that means is that I study everyday interactions like whether the youth thought that they had a fun day with their parent today or whether they felt critiqued or criticized by their teachers. These everyday interactions seem relatively unimportant, but together they contribute to our general impressions about about relationships that matter a lot to us, like how close we feel to the family or whether we feel safe at school. I also study everyday stressors that are unavoidable, um, like getting a bad grade on a test or feeling like someone’s talking behind your back. Again, these um on their own don’t feel super harmful, but they give us a really important opportunity to practice different ways of coping and the way that respond to these stressors actually have implications for long-term mental health. I also use different types of approaches to really capture experiences as they are coming up and unfolding in everyday life. I conduct studies using ecological momentary assessments or brief surveys that participants can fill out sometimes sometimes several times a day over multiple days and they help us get at questions like right now how do you feel? Did you feel upset in the past 2 hours or what happened at school today? Um and then finally I use naturalistic observational approaches or these are basically recordings um video recordings of everyday interactions that youth may be engaging in with family members or others. Sometimes it can be audio as well or um others also record interactions that might be having online on their smartphones. Um but all of these approaches really help us capture behaviors as they’re again coming up um in daily life. Thinking about ways that you observe behavior such as recordings, what what’s a method that you’ve used for that? Sure. I like to use what I call naturalistic observational methods or um ecological behavioral methods. And so let me just tell you what that looks like. In the most recent study that I did, yeah, great. Um I really wanted to know how parents and kids are talking to each other after school, especially during um or on days when kids might have had some rough things happen um to them during the during the school day. And so I had parents and kids install small cameras on the dashboard of their cars and I asked them to turn it on or plug it in whenever they were in the car together like going to soccer practice, maybe picking up takeout, going on a Target run, moments like that. Okay. So using dash cams in the car is a fascinating method. So, why did you choose that approach and what kinds of things are you learning from those recordings that you might not get through like a survey or an interview? Yeah, I chose that approach because what we’re actually doing in daily life can look different from what we think we’re doing or what the other person thinks maybe a mom is doing or a dad is doing. So these behaviors or these these observational methods that I use allow us to capture behaviors um as they’re really unfolding and um we can capture those behaviors and measure them without the person’s subjective sort of interpretation of the behaviors that are happening around them. Um so one particular type of interaction that we’ve really honed in on is support communication. Um, and when I say support communication or supportive communication, what I’m referring to are conversations that convey um, social support or conversations wherein the youth is seeking support. So, we have recordings from 138 families and so far we’ve done a deep dive into the first three. We’ve um also looked at like an additional 50, but um the first deep dive with our first three families have shown that across a week or two um based on the recordings that we’ve collected, there are a total of about 52 episodes of supportive communication between the parent and the teen where the teen was asking for help or signaling a need for support. And um most of the time parents responded to that need or picked up on that need although not always. Um we found for example in this data that a type of support that we call informational support was the most common. Um we can think of informational support as advice giving or seeking clarification questions to get more information. And that’s the kind of support we’re seeing coming up the most in the day-to-day lives of um teens and their parents. To back it up for our listeners briefly, can you walk us through the types of supportive communication definitions and how they showed up in this particular part of your research? Sure. So, I was looking at five different types of support in my research. Um the first is emotional support and that is where you make someone feel understood and cared for. The second type is informational support which is providing advice or information. The third type is esteem support where you are trying to build someone else’s self-confidence or self-concept. The fourth is social presence just being there which all of these parents were. And then the last one is tang tangible support or instrumental support. And this is where you’re really trying to do practical things to help someone like take them to practice. We know that support of all types is really important for youth mental health. And teens who report that they are feeling supported and that they have people to turn to tend to have fewer symptoms of mental health problems or mental distress. But there’s a lot of nuance to this that remains somewhat underexplored and that’s what I’m really trying to do. Not everyone wants support in the same way and not every situation calls for the same kind of support. We know that’s true from adults, but we’re not quite sure how this looks for teens who are really figuring out their preferences and their styles. Okay. So what you have found in your research is that the informational has so far been most common and emotional is also something that the youth are youth are seeking. Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier in the three families that we’ve done a deep dive on we saw 52 episodes of supportive communication andformational support showed up in almost every single episode that we identified. And then emotional support came up a little a little less than half the time. Some things we just couldn’t measure like social presence we couldn’t really measure because the parent and the teen were together all the time. And then tang tangible support was a little bit hard to measure using this approach because the parent and the teen were stuck in cars. But that was okay. We wanted to know what transpired in everyday conversations. And informational support actually make a lot of sense if you think about your your own relationship with your caregivers or your your youth. Informational support um was considered to be present when the parent asked a lot of clarification questions to maybe convey their interests, get more information, get a better understanding of the child’s situation and or provided advice and opinions. And we found that parents were doing a lot of clarification seeking when the child was bringing up a negative event or a negative experience. And so that came up really almost all the time. Um and and we found that or in conversations with my colleagues in communication sciences, I actually found that that was not that surprising. Although as a psychologist, I did find it somewhat surprising. He said that advice giving is the most most common form of support even among adults. And so I guess that’s what we’re all really compelled to do. Wonderful. So pivoting slightly, what has data from surveys that are filled out shown so far? Yeah. So we had the parents and youth complete surveys about how they want to be supported and what they’re doing to support their teen at the onset of the study. Um and we’ve analyzed that data um together with my students Gari Barage and Serena Wu and they found that and they found a few things. Um specifically we were interested in how these uh supportive communication preferences and perspectives were associated with youth mental health um and what youth wanted and what the parents felt like they were giving. So youth wanted esteem support the least and also they reported receiving it the least. Parents as I mentioned um reported providing esteem support the least and they also reported that they providedformational support at pretty relatively lower levels which is interesting because in our observational data we actually saw quite a bit offormational support. We saw overall that when youth received a lot of um emotional support from their parents, they were doing quite well as in they uh reported the lowest levels of depression. Um when youth sought out a lot offormational support from their parents, they were also doing quite well relative to other youth. Again, meaning that they reported lower levels of depression. Um, interestingly, youth who wanted more esteem support than the average um, peer were showing greater levels of depression. We also found some interesting patterns between like what the youth wanted and what the parents said that they were giving. So for example, one really interesting finding we um noticed was that regardless of how much they want, if there is like a mismatch between the amount offormational support that the youth wants and the amount offormational support that the parent is giving, that was very associated with youth depression. And specifically, if the youth were receiving more than what they wanted, so if they were getting too muchformational support, um those kiddos were reporting higher levels of depression symptoms. Oh, interesting. And I think that’s really interesting because um I know this didn’t probably um or I mentioned this really briefly in uh just a little bit ago, but in general, kids wantedformational support. So like informational support on its own is not a bad thing and in fact we think that it can reflect um problem solving and coping. The child wants to receive advice to figure out what to do when they’re presented with a problem and that’s a good thing. But when the youth is wanting more than what they feel like they’re needing um then that can uh we’re seeing that that being correlated with depression symptoms. And what we think might be going on there is that perhaps um these youth are as as I’ve already mentioned maybe getting too much help. Yes, it definitely sounds like there can be a mismatch between the support that kids are looking for and the support that the parents tend to offer them. Some interesting gaps and mismatches there. Seems like that can really make a difference. Yeah. And actually we know from the couples literature or research on couples that um looking at these matches or um balance I guess of support seeking and support provision is really important. Um for example in couples there’s this idea of invisible support um where support is most helpful and most effective when the receiver doesn’t even know that they’re getting that help. And I think what we’re seeing with thisformational support mismatch piece is perhaps that that yes, it’s helpful for youth. They want it, but if they feel like they’re getting too much of it, it’s going in the opposite direction of invisible support. It’s very visible. Um, and perhaps leading youth to feel um like they don’t have autonomy or they don’t have a lot of power to make their own decisions. That’s just one possible explanation. Yeah, it sounds like that balance can be sometimes difficult to Yeah, absolutely. And I don’t want any parent to feel like providing advice or asking clarification questions is bad. It’s actually very helpful and most youth want some level of that. Um but um also being attuned to what the youth is needing. Um and also being really cognizant of the youth youth’s developing autonomy I think is really important during this period. Yeah, absolutely. Well, since it is back to school season, I would love to ask you a question about school stress and how that spills over into the home and what can parents do to better support their kids through those everyday stressors? Um, sure. I’m happy to talk about that. Um in some of my previous work I looked at stress spillover and um that was actually one of the reasons I wanted to look at supportive communication. Spillover is how stress in one area affects um another. So how stress at school can affect the home life or how it spills over into the home within the same day or even the next day. Um so in in a prior study I looked at whether parent child conflict increased on days when youth experienced more stress at school. Um that is did stress at school spill over into the home and create more stress. What we found was that following difficult days at school the youth felt like they argued more with their parents mothers and fathers and they were less warm and fuzzy with their mothers and fathers. And this pattern was mediated by mood. What that means is when the youth had a rough day at school, they felt worse and that worse sort of mood contributed to this feeling that they uh got into more arguments with their or this this perception that they got into more arguments with their parents, mothers, and fathers, and that it was less um satisfying the interactions at home. So, I thought that kids who are coming from generally very close-knit families would be somewhat protected from the spillover effect. No matter what happens at school, they feel really good about the time that they’re spending with their parents. But what I found was kids who are closer to their parents and coming from more tight-knit families, they were experiencing the greatest level of spillover. And that closeness really seemed to amplify the spillover effect. The other piece that was somewhat interesting was that parents actually didn’t notice a change in their interaction quality. Parents were like things are normal and it was really the youth who was perceiving that they were getting into more arguments with their parents and that they were less close. Um so it could be that things are okay on the whole and still of course youth perceptions matter. Yeah. Yeah. I would it would seem to me that you know parents coming from a parent myself of thinking like oh they just had a bad day. Yeah. And I think that’s a really reasonable response. Um and actually it could also mean that even though the youth feels like they were more or the adolescent feels like they were more distant from their parent um maybe those negative feelings didn’t like manifest behaviorally. That’s so great. So what can parents do in these sorts of instances? Um I think um so thinking about both research studies that I just um had the opportunity to share, I think first we definitely want parents to be offering emotional support and to be present if possible if their um work schedules allow. Um and our um survey data has shown that kids can never have too much emotional support. Uh we also know from other work that emotional support or like providing comfort, showing understanding and care is um very potent and very helpful. Um, I think it’s also helpful for parents to be available if the child is seeking information or signaling a need to talk about their day more or get advice or get questions. It’s a really or get questions answered. Um, many kids do share about their day, although not everybody does. Um, and if the child is seeking the parents perspective, it’s a really great moment to reinforce problemolving and helpful advice seeking. Those are really good coping skills, very proactive. At the same time, we want to resist the urge to interrogate and sort of be the interviewer. I know parents want to ask a lot of questions. Um but um we have to maybe uh do that kind of question asking or asking for details sort of at the level that the child is seeking. The kid also or the youth may will have bad days and I think as humans we all know that there are bad days and there are good days. Um so just remembering to balance the bad days with fun days or lighter sort of relaxing days I think is important. And um my research at least seems to suggest that when you are close with your child, you may get the full range of emotions. Um both the irritability and the joy. And um that’s not the worst thing. Yeah, both the irritability and the joy. I love that. So Sunny, as you’ve been working on this research, what has been come as a surprise to you? Has any of your findings challenged your assumptions? Yeah, one thing that we hear from colleagues is like how authentic are families really when they are um when they know that they’re being video recorded or observed on video um or observed either through direct recording or their phone. Um, one thing that really surprises me, um, aside from all the interesting findings that I had the opportunity to chat about today is that people surprisingly are showing their authentic selves. Uh, and maybe it’s not the most authentic. We would never know, right? Because we don’t get to be true flies um, on the wall, but we are seeing a good range of behaviors, interaction types. Every family is different and um and there are just so many different ways that parents are connecting with their kids and caring for their kids and it’s just really inspiring and fun and it gives me really good ideas and so yeah I think that’s like the one thing that I’ve been the most surprised by. There is so much diversity, so much individuality and at the same time just care. That’s great. Fascinating stuff. Well, Dr. Sunny Bay, thank you so much for your time and sharing your research with us today. Any final thoughts you’d like to share with us? No. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks again for joining us today. If you’re interested in learning more, check out the links in the episode description. And don’t forget to follow This is Oregon for more stories from the University of Oregon. We’ll see you on the next episode. This is Oregon is produced by the Division of University Communications. For more of the latest University of Oregon research and news, visit news.orggon.edu or find us on your favorite social media platform using the handle@ Oregon. Thanks for listening and go Ducks.
On this episode we’re joined by Dr. Sunny Bai, Assistant Professor of Children’s Behavioral Health and Psychology at the University of Oregon’s Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health. Bai shares her latest research on family life, explores parent’s communication styles with their children, and offers tips to support youth as the school year begins.
Topics
The Science of Family Life [00:26]
Inside Parent-Child Communication [6:06]
Key Insights from Family Life Research [9:32]
Supporting Youth Through School Stress [14:44]
Surprising Findings in Family Research [19:50]
Guest
Dr. Sunny Bai, Assistant Professor of Children’s Behavioral Health and Psychology at the University of Oregon’s Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health.
Resources
Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health, learn more about UO’s institute and facility on the Portland campus, which focuses on educating the next generation of children’s behavioral health professionals, advancing research in child behavioral health, and providing community-based programs to support the mental health and well-being of children and families.
Psychology Department at UO, explore UO’s Department of Psychology, which offers programs to both undergraduate and graduate students interested in the study of human behavior, including areas such as child and adolescent development, biopsychology, and social behavior, while helping students build a foundation for careers in mental health, education, and related fields.
SAFE Lab, find out about Dr. Bai’s Strengthening Adolescents and Families Everyday (SAFE) lab, where research examines family life, the effects of stress on parent—child relationships, and how internalizing disorders in adolescence affect children and families, with hands-on opportunities for students seeking research experience to contribute to ongoing projects.
Listen to more episodes and explore the Oregon Podcast Network at news.uoregon.edu/podcasts