Enliven, Enrich, Engage

The work of brain researcher and psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist has galvanized the neuroscience community, and far beyond, but Iain does not go into how it is best used. Our right hemisphere is a miraculous thing, connecting to both our body, and our memories in a way that is astonishing, and profoundly helpful. I had to turn to the work of Gene Gendlin, Leslie Ellis, and Anne Weiser Cornell into focussing and body signals, to make Iain's work useable for our most pressing problems. As with all my earlier books, Manhood, Raising Boys, Secrets of Happy Children my job is to take breakthroughs and get them out there in plain and lively form so everyone can benefit. Fingers crossed, some answers are badly needed, and I hope I have done justice to these amazing minds.

Anger is the ‘fight’ part of the fight or flight response. It has important work to do. Anger never exists on its own. It exists to hold other more vulnerable emotions in a way that feels safer. It’s sometimes feels easier, safer, more acceptable, stronger to feel the ‘big’ that comes with anger, than the vulnerability that comes with anxiety, sadness, loneliness. This isn’t deliberate. It’s just another way our bodies and brains try to keep us safe.

The problem isn’t the anger. The problem is the behaviour that can come with the anger. Let there be no limits on thoughts and feelings, only behaviour. When children are angry, as long as they are safe and others are safe, we don’t need to fix their anger. They aren’t broken. Instead, drop the anchor: as much as you can - and this won’t always be easy - be a calm, steadying, loving presence to help bring their nervous systems back home to calm.

Then, when they are truly calm, and with love and leadership, have the conversations that will grow them -
- What happened?
- What can you do differently next time?
- You’re a really great kid. I know you didn’t want this to happen but here we are. How can you make things right. Would you like some ideas? Do you need some help with that?
- What did I do that helped? What did I do that didn’t help? Is there something that might feel more helpful next time?

When their behaviour falls short of ‘adorable’, rather than asking ‘What consequences they need to do better?’ let the question be, ‘What support do they need to do better.’ Often, the biggest support will be a conversation with you, and that will be enough.♥️

When you have a neurotypical child, you feel reasonably assured that class participation and decent study habits will result in good grades. These kids have close friends. They get invited to participate in social things like dances and weekend gatherings. They make the teams, auditions, organizations and clubs.

But when you have a child with certain differences, this is often not the case. Learning may take longer, both academically and socially. Despite their tremendous efforts, results are often a fraction of their peers and social acceptance is fleeting, setting them up for painful comparisons and bitter frustration. Instead of a fun and fulfilling experience, school can become a breeding ground for depression and anxiety, and assignments a battle ground at home. It is exhausting for parent and child alike.

This is the week of SPED (Special Education), Autism, Dyslexia, and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) awareness. For all the children who struggle every day to succeed in a world that does not recognize their gifts and talents, and for those who are walking beside them, please let this be a gentle reminder to be kind and accepting of ALL people.
Recognize that the "playing field" is not always a level surface. Children who learn differently are not weird. They are merely gifted in ways that our society does not value enough. Yet they want what everyone else wants: To be accepted!!

If you choose, please "copy and paste" (by touching and holding the text) onto your profile in honor of all children who are deemed "different".
Our world would be far less beautiful without them.

🤍🤎❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤🤍

Our greatest parenting ‘tool’ is our use of self - our wisdom, modelling, conversations, but for any of this to have influence we need access to their ‘thinking’ brain - the prefrontal cortex - the part that can learn, think through consequences, plan, make deliberate decisions. During stress this part switches off. It is this way for all of us. None of us are up for lectures or learning (or adorable behaviour) when we’re stressed.

The greatest stress for young brains is a felt sense of separation from their important people. It’s why time-outs, shame, calm down corners/chairs/spaces which insist on separation just don’t work. They create compliance, but a compliant child doesn’t mean a calm child. As long as a child doesn’t feel calm and safe, we have no access to the part of the brain that can learn and be influenced by us.

Behind all behaviour is a need - power, influence, independence, attention (connection), to belong, sleep - to name a few). The need will be valid. Children are still figuring out the world (aren’t we all) and their way of meeting a need won’t always make sense. Sometimes it will make us furious. (And sometimes because of that we’ll also lose our thinking brains and say or do things that aren’t great.)

So what do we do when they get it wrong? The same thing we hope our people will do when we get things wrong. First, we recognise that the behaviour is not a sign of a bad child or a bad parent, but their best attempt to meet a need with limited available resources. Then we collect them - we calm ourselves so we can bring calm to them. Breathe, be with. Then we connect through validation. Finally, when their bodies are calm and their thinking brain is back, talk about what’s happened, what they can do differently next time, and how they can put things right. Collect, connect, redirect.♥️

Ready for 21 days of tuning in to your parenting?

Day 1: One of the best places to start is knowing where you’d like to end up. So it is worth taking some time to clearly visualise your best parenting self:
• If you were being your ideal version of yourself what traits/characteristics would you have?
• Clearly picture what you would be saying and how would you be saying it?
• Imagine how you would feel and what kind of things you would be doing?
• Now write that description in as much detail as possible.
Writing things down can help us gain greater clarity and vision. You may like to keep a journal so that you can add and reflect over the coming weeks and later look back to see how far you’ve come.
Tell us about the changes you most want to make. And check in here for support!

😍

Do we need to make children stick at things they hate, so that they can learn that life isn't all about doing things they enjoy?

Here are four reasons why not.

1. Making someone do things they hate does not teach them to stick at things. Sticking at things is not the same as not being allowed to quit. One comes from the inside, the other from the outside. Making a child stick at things they hate teaches them that they have no power and that you are controlling them.

2. Sticking at things you hate is not actually such a useful skill, Knowing when to quit is something many adults struggle with, as is demanding change when things aren't right.

3. When adults stick at things they hate, they do so for a reason. Usually money or because it has another value for them. Sticking at things you hate for no reason at all (except that you aren't allowed to quit) is a quick route to deep unhappiness.

4. Childhood is the one time in a person's life when they do not need to support themselves and have no responsibilities. Why on earth would we make children spend that precious time practicing for the possibility that in adult life they may need to do a job they hate?

Illustration Jonathan Borba under Unsplash.

😍🤩😍🤩 Love this!

All behaviour is communication! It would be so much more effective to listen to what that behaviour is telling us rather than use a chart on the wall to measure it!

Make Better Choices (with Missing The Mark)

It’s a common feature of the primary school classroom. The behaviour chart on the wall, with children’s names on pegs. Children are moved from the sun to the clouds, or from green to red if their behaviour isn’t what is required by their teacher. The language usually goes from celebratory ‘Star Student!’ to condemnatory ‘Poor Choices’ or ‘No Playtime’.

It's in public. The whole class can see who is doing well and who is struggling. The internet is full of versions of these charts to buy, and the advertising copy is all perky positivity. ‘Keep Your Students on Track!’ or ‘Help Your Class Make Good Choices!’. They look so cheerful in their bright colours, so harmless. Who could object? And they work! Children want to stay on the green zone because it feels so bad when they are moved.

Until you talk to the parent of a child who struggles. They’ll tell you about the way in which everyone in their class knows who is on the raincloud, and that no matter how hard their child tries, they just can’t keep still all day. They’ll tell you how their child is known as the ‘bad’ one, and the other children don’t want to play with them. They’ll tell you of developmentally inappropriate expectations, and of the way in which these charts put all the blame on the children.

They’ll tell you of the way in which the chart takes no account of the way that their child is dealing with friendship difficulties and family illness, and instead frame their actions as a ‘poor choice’. The behaviour charts stop us asking whether perhaps the way in which we require children to sit and listen at school isn’t a natural way for young humans to learn. They stop us seeing their behaviour as communication or feedback. It’s reduced to something to control.

These charts use public shaming to foster compliance. They use fear and anxiety – even the children who are always on the Sun lie awake at night, scared that one day they will fall from grace, and everyone will know. That’s how they work. Children ‘behave’ because they are scared of the consequences if they don’t.

It’s Children’s Mental Health week. Perhaps as a psychologist you might expect me to be using it to call for better funding for CAMHS, for a counsellor in every school. Perhaps you think I might be calling for more therapists to be trained and more wellbeing hubs. Instead, I’m calling for a mass take down of behaviour charts.

Psychologists will never have the same impact on mental health as changing the way we treat our children. We could have a psychologist on every street corner, but their job is to intervene when things have gone wrong. Far more efficient is to change the environment which is making children distressed. Think of it like lung cancer. We could have the best oncologists in the world, but all they can do is treat people who are already ill. To reduce levels of lung cancer, we needed a smoking ban.

We’re using shame and anxiety to control children’s behaviour, thinly disguised in bright colours and ‘Ready to Learn!’. It should be no surprise that many of them are unhappy and anxious. In fact, perhaps we should be more surprised if they weren’t. It’s in the very air that they breathe and we, the adults, are putting it there.

They’re breathing it in like smoke.

Parent Effectiveness Training provides alternative solutions to the use of power. Relationships develop that are connected, loving, and mutually respectful. When you learn the P.E.T. skills you provide a legacy of effective communication within all relationships for your children and grandchildren. For courses: etia.org

We all need certain things to feel safe enough to put ourselves into the world. Kids with anxiety have magic in them, every one of them, but until they have a felt sense of safety, it will often stay hidden.

‘Safety’ isn’t about what is actually safe or not, but about what they feel. At school, they might have the safest, most loving teacher in the safest, most loving school. This doesn’t mean they will feel enough relational safety straight away that will make it easier for them to do hard things. They can still do those hard things, but those things are going to feel bigger for a while. This is where they’ll need us and their other anchor adult to be patient, gentle, and persistent.

Children aren’t meant to feel safe with and take the lead from every adult. It’s not the adult’s role that makes the difference, but their relationship with the child.

Children are no different to us. Just because an adult tells them they’ll be okay, it doesn’t mean they’ll feel it or believe it. What they need is to be given time to actually experience the person as being safe, supportive and ready to catch them.

Relationship is key. The need for safety through relationship isn’t an ‘anxiety thing’. It’s a ‘human thing’. When we feel closer to the people around us, we can rise above the mountains in our way. When we feel someone really caring about us, we’re more likely to open up to their influence
and learn from them.

But we have to be patient. Even for teachers with big hearts and who undertand the importance of attachment relationships, it can take time.

Any adult at school can play an important part in helping a child feel safe – as long as that adult is loving, warm, and willing to do the work to connect with that child. It might be the librarian, the counsellor, the office person, a teacher aide. It doesn’t matter who, as long as it is someone who can be available for that child at dropoff or when feelings get big during the day and do little check-ins along the way.

A teacher, or any important adult can make a lasting difference by asking, ‘How do I build my relationship with this child so s/he trusts me when I say, ‘I’ve got you, and I know you can do this.’♥️

One of the things I do regularly on this page is share parent dilemmas. I don't share them because I have the answers (I don't). I share them so that we all realise parenting is HARD and it's LONELY. And that really, we're all in this together.

Which I think was a song in High School Musical. Anyway.

Recently the team at Mamamia came to me about a Teenage Summit they wanted to put together. But not just the standard 'teen summit'.They wanted to go deep and shine a light on those issues and scenarios so many parents are facing with their teens.

Va**ng at school.
Watching p**n.
Questioning their sexuaity.
Struggling with depression and anxiety.
Navigating toxic friendships.

All the stuff that we all have ZERO idea how to handle.

In true Mamamia style they've brought together a range of experts AND Gen Zs to talk about the current landscape and what parents need to know to help guide their teens through it!

This summit features experts talking you through ALL THE THINGS

💥 S*x
💥 P**n
💥 S*xuality
💥 Depression
💥 Anxiety
💥 Drugs
💥 Alcohol
💥 Va**ng
💥 Social media
💥 Self-esteem
💥 Depression
💥 Anxiety
💥 Toxic friendships
💥 Friendship break-ups

**Sadly there is no session on "Why does my teen have 85 dirty glasses and 37 forks on their bedroom floor?"

I'll be one of the speakers (talking about friendships, of course)!

The Early Bird price is now on and you get access to the live summit PLUS six months of access to all the videos for $59 total.

So if you're in the thick of it with your teen don't miss out! You can watch the summit at your own pace when it's convenient over the next 6 months.

Buy your ticket here:
https://www.livingwithteens.com.au/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=becsparrow&utm_content=page

** That's my affiliate link as one of the speakers at the summit. So when you purchase your ticket using my link - I get paid! THANK YOU! xx