Dr Alison Pike talks about The Secret Life of 4 Year Olds series

1 November 2016

Can you tell us a little bit about your expertise and areas of interest?

I've spent most of my career looking at family dynamics, parenting, and how family life affects a child's well-being.

I'm interested in a child's development generally, but especially in what we call the 'normal range'.

I'm not a clinical psychologist so I'm not focussed on specific disorders or anything like that, but I look at children's adjustment generally, including some pro-social, positive aspects of behaviour.

I've done most of my work with primary school children aged four to ten, which is what I find most fascinating.

I'm really interested in children's own perspectives, which is what I love about this age.

Obviously you can't have a conversation with babies. But four and five year olds, as we see in Secret Lives, can be pretty articulate and pretty hilarious.

How helpful is your work on Secret Life in relation to your day to day job?

It's amazing. I've done some clinical research in the past where we've done puppet interviews with children and we ask questions where it feels like quite a natural conversation for children where they can open up and give their perspective.

And it works well but in general, I tend to focus more on going into the family home and really seeing them in a natural environment because that's important to me.

But even so, there are all these little conversations that are picked up on Secret Life between siblings or between peers thated up on Secret Life between siblings or between peers that you never, as an adult, get to see normally.

I'm a parent of two boys, aged five and eight. I would loved to have seen them doing a series like this!

I've never been able to see children behaving as naturally as we see here. It's a totally unique scenario.

Children have such unique personalities even from this young age and I think we forget that sometimes.

And what did you learn?

The thing that really struck me was how good almost all of them were at creating their own really sophisticated imaginative play scenarios with no adult intervention.

I think that parenting today, given our fear of 'stranger danger' and our concerns for their safety, has become a little safe and we are tempted to just put our children in front of technology all day long, whether it be gaming or DVDs.

Yet here they were in a safe space with lots of stimulating toys, and no technology in sight, and they were playing beautifully for a really long time!

They weren't asking for technology and they weren't asking the adults for help in structuring their play. That was a real eye-opener.

It made me realise that perhaps we need to leave kids alone and let them work it out for themselves.

For the first hour that my boys get up, they're not allowed to play with anything technical. After that they can if they want to, but once they've got into the swing of imaginative play, they tend to just carry on.

What were your favourite tasks?

We had some identical twin boys, which was delightful for me, given my interest in sibling relationships.

They were competitive with each other, but it never turned into hostility. They had that drive to win, their competitive spirit wasn't dampened; but they also looked out for each other.

For one task, we had them being captains of opposing teams. The twin who won was very happy but the second thing he did after celebrating was to comfort his twin.

There was another task where all the children were making fruit salad and they were so chuffed with themselves. They loved being given this important job to do.

Another example of empowering children by giving them a task, was when they gave two boys a party to organise.

That was nice because these boys had had a really rocky love-hate week, and doing this task really brought them together.

I think that's quite a nice strategy. If two children aren't getting on, sometimes giving them a nice project to do together can really be helpful.

Children like structure and rules and teamwork and being given responsibility.

How did you get on with the other experts?

Great; it was so interesting to talk through our different ideas together.

I see all behaviour as pretty typical and it takes a lot to convince me that there's something wrong, whereas Elizabeth will more often look at the range of different behaviours and connect them to potential problems in the future.

So that was really interesting to hear.

I think what we all talked about a lot is that we think of observing children as being objective.

But what's nice about Secret Life is when the children are interviewed and they explain what happened leading up to an incident.

And then you realise, they're not being naughty, but there's been some kind of argument or something to make them stressed, and that's caused them to be a bit aggressive or not play nicely.

They just haven't learned the coping strategies we've learned as adults.

The children might tell us about something that's upset them and you think, 'Oh, that's like the time I was in a meeting and someone talked over me or stole my idea'.

And okay, I didn't go over and kick the person who stole my idea but I probably wanted to! So I can understand why that child behaved badly.

Some parents are rightly concerned with treating their children equally, but actually what's important is asking the child, 'How does it make you feel when your parents treat your brother differently?'

For example, two siblings might have different needs and they might be treated differently and that might be absolutely fine and cause no issues.

I think it's important to look at issues from the child's perspective rather than our own perspective.

Why do you think the show is so popular?

It's entertaining, and it reaches a wide audience. I always end up with a smile on my face. It's delightful watching these lovely children.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

But there's also an element of education and if there are two or three kernels that people can take away with them from watching, that's fantastic.

We don't want to be at all preach-y, and if it was too science-y then you wouldn't have such a big audience. But there is useful information there.

For example, watching Kate, the teacher, was fascinating. She delivers such a masterclass in managing child behaviour.

For one thing, she's always calm with the children, which is easier when they're not related to you!

She has a really nice way of - instead of telling the children what to do - asking them what they want to do.

She gives them a choice about how to resolve their problems and I think it's very powerful to watch children articulating what they want to do.