‘No blaming or shaming’ - Kate Silverton wants to ‘take the pressure off parents’ with her new book

Virgin Radio

28 Mar 2024, 12:07

Journalist and broadcaster Kate Silverton’s second book, There’s Still No Such Thing As Naughty, is released today.

In the book, Kate looks at the behavioural challenges that parents face, and offers wisdom and insight into the inner workings of a child's mind, and how best to help them as they develop into teenagers and young adults in the modern age. 

Joining the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with webuyanycar, she said: “I want to take the pressure off parents. No blaming or shaming, let's come together, look at what the science can tell us, because it really informs what our ancestors intuitively knew. And it can help us parent more confidently.”

Now a child therapist, Kate volunteers in a clinical practice to support children in need and works privately to help parents find their joy and harmony at home. She told Chris: “I'm sharing lots of things in the book that are quick, easy to apply for us as well as our children.”

The book follows on from Kate’s 2021 bestseller, There’s No Such Thing As Naughty, and uses easy to understand analogies, such as the Baobab Tree, the Lizard, the Baboon and the Wise Old Owl, representing different behavioural tendencies. Kate explained: “I liken in the brain to a Baobab Tree tree, known across Africa as a tree of wisdom. The roots of the tree are our nervous system and at the bottom of the tree is the little lizard. And this represents in reality, our brainstem, cerebellum and diencephalon. This is where the roots and origins of anxiety are. And this is where our nervous system really drives behaviour. So that's a little lizard. 

“And we can think of him very skittish, and he might go into fight, flight, freeze, or he might sort of play dead. That's essentially what this part of the brain drives us to do if we're under threat. And that's the part that drives our baby's behaviour. And while we're in the womb, because our children's brains develop in sequence. So all the parts are there from birth, but they sort of mature at a different rate.” 

Kate continued: “The next bit I think of as a baboon sitting on his branch, and this is our emotional sort of limbic system. And this is where we see our toddlers beating their chests. ‘No, I won't do that.’ And all of the really big emotions get processed here. So we can imagine this little baboon having a massive tantrum in Tesco is on the floor.

“But what we really want to do is develop the prefrontal cortex, which is what I call the wise owl. She's the bit that, when the baboon’s bounding and the lizard’s feeling fizzy, she's the bit that swoops down, scoops them up in the warmth of her wings and says, ‘Guys, it's okay, we've got this.’ And this is what we, in reality, what the neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel calls vertical integration, this is how we achieve good mental health. 

Kate explained that “Our children's brains don't finish their development until they're in their 20s,” and told Chris: “The part of the brain that regulates big behaviour, that wise owl, that's the part that's still developing. So we see all these massive behaviour, lizard and baboon going wild, but our children can't self-regulate very well, just yet. That's why this is so important. And that's what I'm trying to do in the book is to help parents to wise owl their children, to lend their calm. So in this way, we are teaching ourselves to regulate our emotions, and that's why it's so important for us as well.”

There’s Still No Such Thing As Naughty is out Today.

For more great interviews listen to The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with webuyanycar weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or catch up on-demand here.