Interview with Dr Elizabeth Kilbey from Secret Life of 4 Year Olds

25 October 2016

What's it like, watching the children for several hours per day?

You get so immersed in it. The curtains are drawn, you can’t tell what the weather’s like outside from our room, and the only window on the world is that screen. I’m really captivated.

And you can hear them breathing so you have such a connection to them.

If one of them is about to cry, you can hear their breathing rhythm change. It's full on.

As a mother, do you worry about them when they get upset?

Yes, although I think Sam and I both feel like we live the highs and lows of the children as they go through it.

It's partly because we are so in tune with them and you can feel how painful it is. I feel we have a relationship with them.

We never talk to them but we do see them in the corridor sometimes and you think, 'Oh, I know you'.

So you feel a sense of protection towards them when they're upset.

But what's amazing about children of this age is that they just get up and carry on and they're fine five minutes later.

When you pass them in the corridor, do the kids even know who you are?

No, not a clue. It’s devastating! Sometimes they say, 'Hello, hello' into their microphones, but they don't know it's me that's listening.

 So the children are very aware that they are going to be on TV?

Yes, and that’s the real beauty of the show, because I know that there would be a lot of concern about filming children covertly and that's absolutely not what this is.

The cameras are at their head height. They frequently walk up to the cameras, peer into them, and say 'hi'.

Last week one of the children wanted something and just went up to a camera, and said, ‘Hello, can we have some water?’

There is no possibility that they don’t know what’s happening here. It’s amazing how quickly they forget and they just fall into the normality of the scenario, though.

It's very normal, very school-like, very structured, and they feel very safe so they can just behave in a  normal childlike way.

What's so interesting about this age group?

Your world is quite small when you’re four. You know your family and your extended family, and you think what’s normal for you is the same for everybody.

So the first time you go to someone else’s house for tea, you go, ‘They don’t do it like we do’.

When you get to five, you know people are different, and you start exploring it, asking, 'How do you do it in your house?'.

You go from being egocentric at age four to being completely curious at five and asking new people, 'Who are you, what's your name, why have you got long hair, why aren't your parents like mine?'

It's a golden window, developmentally speaking. There is no ever stage of life where we have this period that is so crucial cognitively and neuro-developmentally.

Does filming Secret Life help you with your day job?

Definitely. I frequently go and visit, observe, do classroom visits, do home visits, but I'm the least inconspicuous person ever. They know I'm there to observe.

The amount of times I've wished for a one-way mirror to work out what's going on, and now I have it.

In real life, I'm seeing the end of why something has happened, and I've missed the stage in between. So now, I have these little lightbulb moments where I see the beginning and it's like joining the dots.

Instead of guesswork, my interventions become a lot more accurate because to really intervene properly you have to have assessed the problem properly.

So it’s more than just an entertainment show then?

Oh completely, completely! I'm passionate about psychology and if one adult or parent out there has a revelation about their child as a result of this, that is awesome.

Do the children learn anything?

You wouldn't think two weeks is very long but we pack a lot into each day and they grow enormously.

There are moments that would have been a real challenge for them at the start, that they are sailing through by the end.

They are developing at such an amazing rate at that age, and because we are so focused on their psychological development, it's really noticeable.

Did parents come up to you after the first series and tell you they had learned something from watching it?

Yes, they'd say things like, 'I understand why my child struggles when they go into school' or, 'I hand them over crying and within five minutes I know they’re going to be alright because I know they’re going to settle'.

Ultimately I'd love to educate people about how to understand their children themselves, even if that means doing myself out of a job!

Were you pleased to have been nominated for a BAFTA for the first series?

Yes, the show has been so positively received. We must never forget the stars of the show are the children.

Whenever I meet people, they want to talk to me about the children. You know, Sam, Paul and I have had to manage our egos!

I feel like I’ve done my job properly because I have put across the science and the personalities of what we were watching.

Are there any stand-out tasks to you this year?

The 'three Bs'. There was a great 'baby' one. We gave the children electronically-activated imitation real life babies that cry if they’re hungry or need feeding.

There was a classic gender split of the girls being a lot more attentive, and the boys becoming quite bored quite quickly.

One of the boys wandered off saying, ‘I don’t want to be a dad. I want to be a dog.’

But there was another boy who was incredibly gentle and attentive.

It's impossible not to watch that and think, 'Wow, are we born with gender or do we learn it?'. It's so thought-provoking in terms of where our innate instincts come from.

Then there was bed-making, which had us rolling around with laughter.

The children had such different approaches: there were the bed bouncers, the dogged and determined children, the cushion throwers. My favourite bit was one of the boys lost inside a pillowcase going, 'Somebody help me, I can't get out'.

And the final 'b' was blind tasting. We got the children to feed each other some slightly unusual food and guess what it was.

It really split the pack in terms of anxieties, trust, and vicarious learning: that is, doing it after you've seen someone else doing it first. That is very prevalent in sports psychology - visualising the task first.

What's lovely is that children are much more capable than you think. Most parents wouldn't get their children to make a bed at this age, but they can do it.

In fact, I don’t think there’s anything they wouldn’t be able to master. Having seen six children make two double beds, I now think they could build the Eiffel Tower if you gave them enough time.

Are there any favourite tasks coming back?

Yes, there's delayed gratification, which everyone loves.

So that's putting out a cake and telling the children they can't eat it yet; or the gum ball machine with the sign saying, 'Do not touch'.

We are always intrigued by delayed gratification tasks because it’s so completely relatable: we call it 'will power' in adults.

Small children can't wait, then there is a tipping point in their development where they can wait, and that tipping point is around this age.

So some of our group can do it, some can't, and the results are always hilarious.

Why is the show so popular, do you think?

For parents, it's about having a better understanding with your own children. But we've all been four, so even if you're not a parent, you're relating to experiences you've had.

And on another level, you can watch the playground dynamics and think, 'That's actually a bit like our office'.

There is something relatable at every level about what the children are showing us because they’re so human and that’s essentially what we’re so fascinated in, the human experience.