Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not To Screw Up Your Kids podcast, the deeper dive episodes designed to unpick a thorny topic so you have things that you can take away, manageable actions which you can implement either for yourself, your family, or within an educational setting. I'm your host, Dr. Mary Henn, psychologist and parenting expert. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and enjoy the conversation. Today's episode, nine modelled behaviours boosting academic success, confidence, and friendships, is all about the tangible things that we can do. So, let me just sort of give you a bit of context and a bit of background to why this podcast has sort of come about. So, if you're a regular subscriber to my newsletter, you will see that in the last few weeks, I would have shared an interview with Eileen Gu, who is a professor at the University of London, and she's a professor at the University of London. So, if you're a regular subscriber to my newsletter, you will see that in the most decorated Winter Olympian. And it was an interview that she had where a journalist asked her how she felt about the fact that she hadn't won a gold medal. And I think it was positioned, if I remember rightly, as it was a failed attempt. And her response was phenomenal in her steadfastness of her own worth and what she had achieved and the impact that it had had on her. So, I think that's what got me thinking beyond the fact that I shared that particular video, which we have put a link in the show notes for those of you who are not subscribers of the newsletter and would like to see it. But it got me thinking, as a parent, how incredibly proud would you be if your child responded in that way? And it got me sort of down a little bit of a rabbit hole in terms of trying to investigate not only the situation with Eileen in terms of her parenting, how she'd been parenting, but also how she'd been parenting and was there a reason why? Had they done something particular that had resulted in this phenomenally confident, self-assured young woman? So, I looked at that and then really just trying to say, are there commonalities? Are there things that us of ordinary day young people can take with us that will really impact? And the reason why I've picked academic success, confidence and friendships is that they're often the three things, that when I talk to parents, of course, we naturally want our children to excel academically and achieve their full potential. But we also want them to be super confident, as in Eileen Gu's unwavering self-assuredness. But also, we want our children to have a network, a friendship group, a tribe, as they then launch themselves into their adulthood. So, I was really looking at, are there some commonalities which have been, scientifically studied? So, I wanted this stuff to be robust, that would predict our children's pattern of behavior so that we could, you know, I could then share that with you. And it turns out there are. Now, there are a number. I have chosen to look at modeled behaviors and our expectations, which I'm going to cover across two separate podcast episodes. This one is about modeled behavior. And the reason why I decided to choose those two is because I felt that they were the ones that, as parents, were going to be the ones that were going to be the ones that were going to have the most control over. They're down to what we do, how we behave and how we model that behavior to our children, and how we communicate through our language, but also through our behavior, what our expectations are for our children. And it turns out that in the situation with Eileen Gu, she, her grandmother, sadly died while she was over at the Winter Olympics. And she had anticipated that her mother, her grandmother had been unwell for a while. But when Eileen remembered her grandmother, she was over at the Winter Olympics. And she had anticipated that her grandmother, she used language such as she was a steamship, you know, noting that this woman commanded life, and she grabbed it by the reins, and she made it into what she wanted to be. Now, I'm sure with Eileen, there are, you know, there are lots of factors that would have impacted her, but her upbringing was by two incredibly powerful women. Her father's not present in her life. And so she has got really this steamship of a grandmother. And a mother who was very determined and driven within her own career, and also in terms of her own academic success. So it got me thinking, and that's why I've used her that particular example, because what Eileen was surrounded by was modeled behavior from women who were an instrumental part of her day to day life. And so this episode is going to we're going to look at modeling. Now, when we talk about modeling, it basically, in other words, it's the behaviors that our children see every day from us, and how we can harness this without lecturing, because it's they just do it through observation, to help boost their academic success, their confidence, and their friendships. Now, let's dive in. Now, when we think about modeling, it comes from the psychological research, which is seen as what we call a type of vicarious learning. So in other words, not learning, learning directly from your own actions, but by observing the actions of others. And one of the very early studies, back, I think, about 1963, there was this famous study by Albert Bandura, called the Bobo doll study. And in essence, what happened was that children observed adults interacting with this Bobo doll. So if you're old enough to remember weebles wobble, but they don't fall down, they're almost like if you imagine like a type of inflatable skittle that was waiting underneath. And so it could if it when it was punched, because this looks specifically at aggressive behavior, when it was punched, it would then wobble back up. And in essence, I'll cut a long story short, by all means, go and look up the study yourself. But in essence, children watched adults with a certain number of different toys, of which the Bobo dolls was one interacting with these and pair and then these adults then had these specific aggressive acts that they had with this child. And so what happened was they observed it for a short period of time. And then they were placed in a room with the Bobo doll and all the other toys that had been in the same room as the adults and they'd modeled it. And basically what they found was the children modeled the behavior. And not only did they model the behavior specifically, they the exact same acts, but they then sort of came up with some novel ones. And it was the beginning of what we called social learning theory, which is basically we learn through the observation of people that we see around us. And it was sort of probably one of the beginning pieces of research that we use that were linking violence that children observed to violent acts that then came out. But in essence, that when we're talking about modeling, it's this notion that children are observing and watching. And so what we found was that children are observing us all of the time, and then they tend to pick up these things. Now we know that they tend to pick up patterns of behavior, which they repeat, if there is a sort of a strong emotional cue within that, and they've got a really strong desire to do it. So the way that I'm going to sort of run through this with you is I'm going to look at three ways we can model academic success to our children, three ways we can model confidence, and three ways we can model good friendships, because that means that you've got something to do in each of those. Now, as you know, I am a big fan of the power of one. When we listen, and if you're anything like me, when you listen to a podcast, or when you read something, and it really resonates with you, it's like, yes, that's it. This is amazing. I'm going to do that. And this is what I'm going to do. And then we charge ahead. But often we're charging ahead trying to do too many things. So my recommendation, and obviously you can do whatever you want to do. But my recommendation would be to listen to the three in the academic, the three in the confidence, and the three in the friendships, and then decide for each of your children, which area do you feel that your child is probably could benefit from the greatest amount of growth in right now. And I would say, it may well be that you're listening to this and saying, absolutely, my child academic success, they're just there, can't be bothered, they're unmotivated. And so that's what I'm going to do. What I would just urge you to think about is consider how confident your child is, because to me, confidence underpins academic success, and confidence underpins friendships. So if you have got a child that is struggling with the academic success and the friendships, and you, if in all honesty, you would say, actually, do you know what, they're not really that confident. My suggestion would be to consider some of the things around the confidence piece that you would start to do. First of all, and then secondly, if you have a child that is struggling with the academic success, and then move on to the next one, if you've got a super confident child, but they just seem to be struggling with friendships, or they're struggling with the academics, then absolutely dive into either of those. I just find confidence is so foundational to our children being able to push themselves in new and novel and slightly out of their comfort zone areas, that if we really don't have that as a solid foundation, we struggle to get them into those other areas. Now, of course, this is about us modelling. So the other reflection that you're going to potentially want to do is as you hear the three things you might say actually I need to work on those things so I really it's not maybe ideal for me to start there I could start somewhere else because I because of that or you could argue if you're already modeling lots of things around academic success but you find do you know I'm actually not modeling a lot in the confidence area then maybe consider that so those are just a couple of suggestions so let's dive in and the first one with how can we model academic success because it feels like a how can we do that we know we're we're long past the kind of taking our own exams so the first one is that you know let our children see us learn so this is about reading books problem solving out loud looking things up showing curiosity using language like let's figure this out together instead of just do it so we're we're we're modeling that curiosity and that desire always to learn something new to problem solve it and the research is really clear particularly around reading which is why I know that this is you know when our children see us learn it's so powerful because reading predicts our reading habits what children observe in terms of whether we sit down and read a book has a significant impact on their likelihood of them then reading a book so there's a real significance there if children don't see parents sitting down and reading books unless your child has got an innate well not even an innate but if they are someone who who seeks it out on their own initiative and on their own motivation that's different but you are not going to have the likelihood is that you're not going to have a child who will sit and read as well and I think in lots of ways this is one of the sort of the challenges of the fact that we just very few people buy newspapers anymore you know I remember because I'm very old I remember my parents getting the newspaper I remember my parents getting the radio times and tv times all of those sorts of things that I would have at least seen them with some form of reading material frequently whereas of course so often now I get my news feed directly on my mobile phone or I can get it on my laptop I do love I have to say and that's probably maybe because of my age I do love the paper and I will occasionally buy a paper and I do love to buy a magazine but I it's just this when our children see us learning when they see us reading books pulling things out and of course again we probably how often do you pull out a dictionary it's those sorts of things because we often are just so quick to look it up online whereas actually that maybe that's a good thing maybe get a dictionary and then whenever your children are talking about something to spell something or we're looking up words we can actually physically get that out so the first one in terms of modeling academic success is let them see you learn the second one is about modeling persistence not perfection yeah so saying things like god this is tricky but I'm going to keep going so we're teaching that and I'll tell you that that's probably one area that I've not been really good at particularly around things to do with tech I'll get frustrated with things that are not you know technically you know I feel that I can't do and then that exasperated oh my god I can't do this I just it's rubbish whereas actually this is tricky but I'm going to keep going and that keeping going doesn't necessarily mean that you keep going and keep bouncing around in terms of failure but that persistent in terms of I've chosen to fix this I've chosen to work out how to do this I'm going to persist and part of that persistence may be that we call in an expert but it's the fact that we don't seek perfection and the fact that we don't give up very quickly are the really crucial bits in terms of what we model to our children particularly where we end up trying something and then immediately deferring to our partner so that what would the language that we're you know what our children are then seeing modeled to them is a I'm not capable and I'm just someone else I'm going to delegate it to someone else when our children have seen us be persistent and then make an informed decision that actually in order to get this resolved I need to call in an expert that's a very different dynamic to giving up and then simply passing it to someone else and where a task becomes too big for us to be able to complete immediately let's show our children you know how we break down big tasks into those smaller steps okay this is what needs to be done and I don't I really don't have the time to do all of that today so what I'm going to do is I'm going to do this and this and then I can come back and do the other bit. So let them see you learn model persistence not perfection and the third one is show healthy tech and work habits so what we're modeling here is we're modeling and setting ourselves a really visible routine for focus so when we're focused our phone is away we're having short breaks we finish tasks and then when we are having our time off or decompress our switch off there is a very clear demarcation our children can see and they can see that we're doing the right thing and we're doing the right thing and we're doing the right thing and they can see ah my parents are working right now or my parents are relaxing the lines don't get blurred particularly I think for those of you who've got older children who get really frustrated when they're supposed to be doing revision and instead all that you're seeing is them constantly checking their phone so let's model that let's model those really distinct areas of what we're doing because our children are much more likely to copy the structure that they see playing out rather than the rules themselves so if they can see that that's there's that real clear structure that that can help so those are three things that we can do in terms of modeling academic success because what we're doing with the letting them see us learn is that learning is something that is lifelong and isn't arduous and it's something about curiosity and it's something that we value within our family modeling persistence teaches them not to give up to dig deep to get that grit and perseverance even when things go wrong and then breaking things down and then the third one about these healthy tech and work habits is we're demonstrating to them how they can then create their own schedules and their own routines and not in necessarily anything strict but they can see that there's a time to work and that there's also a time to play so those are the three things for academic success so how about we now dive into modeling how do we model confidence to our children well confidence we know is an inside job so we can't praise it we can't keep telling our children that they're amazing and then expect them by osmosis to then suddenly become super super confident it is experiential it's about being in it to win it so the first thing that we can do in terms of modeling for confidence is we want to model self-compassion you know what kind of language do you use about yourself at humana our
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Speaker 1children are so critical of themselves they would never choose ever ever to speak like that to anyone else and yet they choose to do that to themselves so how do we model our chatter our self-compassion so do we talk kindly to ourselves when we make mistakes now i'm learning it's okay to get things wrong yep be mindful and you might think and i i must admit i sort of thought i i thought that i was particularly good at self-compassion until i did a bit of a an audit for that week you know i love an audit but that i just simply said i'm going to observe the language that i use out loud in front of my children and i was truly shocked at how self-critical i was when i thought that i wasn't so i think that you know if we want our children to become more confident the first place that we're going to be is when we're going to be able to to start is the language that they use about themselves because what we say to ourselves and what our children say to themselves about their ability and their capability underpins their confidence so if they're constantly i'm not good enough i'm not clever enough i'm not popular enough i'm not social enough i can't do this what if that happens they that that drives the pattern of behavior from their brain because our brain doesn't know the difference does it between what's real and what's imagined so if we consistently tell our brain that we are incapable and i'm there is a podcast episode coming up about the stories that we tell but that becomes the story and that and of course if that's the constant story your brain will respond to that story when it's presented with a new situation. Oh, I'm not very good with people. I'm not very good with maths. I'm not very good at spelling. Whatever the narrative is, whatever story we tell ourselves as adults, I'm not very good with tech. I'm not very good with this. Then our children see and then that perpetuates and we want that to really, really shift. So the first one is about modeling self-compassion. The second one is model realistic confidence, not idealistic confidence, but realistic confidence. So share the challenges that you have overcome. You know, I didn't know how to do that first, but I tried and it took a really long time, but I did get better. I'm probably not quite where I want to be. And I know that's probably something that I'm still working on, but I'm really, I'm pleased with the direction that it's going. So the focus of the language that we use is around effort and the strategies that we've used rather than innate talent. Now, I can hear some of you going, yeah, oh my God, Marianne, I've tried that. And they don't listen. They switch off. I guess if you've tried it before, maybe ask yourself, how did I position it? Was it something that was, that I said in the moment where my child was feeling not confident or struggling or finding something, a particular challenge? I find that there's the modeling realistic confidence and sharing our stories works best when it comes out. So I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. That's part of a natural part of the conversation when our children are feeling fine and happy and cheerful and we're having a connected time rather than when we share our experiences and that realistic confidence experience when our children are in the middle of, I just can't do this. I'm rubbish at this. And then we try and sort of tell our tale and that just hits a huge amount of resistance. And the reason why it hits the resistance is that our children are not in their logical brain. They're in their emotional physiological brain. And so actually we need to sort of deal with the body response before we can then start talking about the brain. So the second way is that we can model realistic rather than idealistic confidence, which is focused on effort and strategies, techniques, rather than innate talent. And then the third one, which speaks a little bit to the academic ones in terms of our healthy habits, but this is about modeling. It's about modeling calm coping. In order to put myself or in order for your child to put themselves in a situation that feels uncomfortable, that feels stressful, that triggers their whole sympathetic nervous system and fight or flight, they need to be able to develop a set of coping strategies, strategies that help them go from fight or flight, oh my goodness me, adrenaline, cortisol, I can't cope, back down to rest and restore their parasympathetic nervous system. And they model those coping mechanisms and those coping strategies from what they see us do. And I say this with absolute love. The number of times I have done workshops with children and they have talked often about how stressed their parents are. And I can't talk to my parents about X, Y, or Z because I don't want to stress them out. They're already stressed. So when we're stressed, and this is not about pretending to be anything other than, if you are stressed, you're stressed. What we want to then do is we want to be able to talk to our parents about how stressed they are. And we want to show regulated responses. So things that serve us in that moment. So I need to take a breath, I need to have a moment. And that can be, that's as simple as your child has done something, you are absolutely frustrated with them. And instead of responding in that moment, taking the moment to say, I can't talk to you right now about this. I'm so angry, because I have said this 25 times that you mustn't do that. And right now I know that I'm not in the best place to respond. And I need to get my emotions in check. So I just need, I need some time, I need to take a breath, I need five minutes, we'll reconvene in 10. Whatever that might be, we're modeling this, I've got this feeling. And I know that acting on that feeling in this moment isn't ideal. And I am demonstrating to you that almost best practice is that I just need to take care of that. And that teaches our children that feelings can be managed, that they can be managed, that they don't have to fear them, that they don't have to take over them. But they can, they've got a certain element of autonomy over those. Because the number of times I speak to young people, particularly I think around anger, is that they feel that like it just comes over them. And it's almost like someone else takes over their body and takes over their responses. And so by modeling this, I'm taking control here. And I'm doing something that might help me. And it's really helpful for our, for our children to, particularly around that confidence. And of course, you know, I've said confidence underpins the academic success. So if those feelings come up for our children, when they are doing something academically, then of course, that that can be super helpful too. So we've looked at modeling for academic success. We've looked at how we model for confidence. So now let's talk about how we model for friendships. And this might, I don't know, maybe this seems like a good idea. But I think it's a good idea. And I think it's a good idea. And I think obvious, maybe it does. So I think the first thing is, when we think about the aspects, the qualities that underlie and underpin a really good quality friendship, you may or may not, if you haven't listened to the podcast episode before we've done, I've done it in a couple of different in two parts. But I often use this analogy of Jenga. So if you think about a tower of Jenga, each tower has got these three blocks that then sort of go at right angles to each other. If you imagine that each one of those blocks represented a quality of a good friendship, so kindness, and generosity, honesty, sharing, empathy, those sorts of things. And if you looked at that tower, and you started to remove some of those tiles, but not replacing them on the top, that tower is a solid friendship, you remove some, and that friendship stays solid, we don't need every single one of those qualities to have a really good friendship. But if we remove enough, that tower collapses. So it's that understanding of what are the core qualities that really make a good friendship that we need that are integral to making that stand up. And I would say one of the fundamentals of that is about respectful communication. It's about being able to have conversations and interactions in a respectful way. So when we think about how we might model friendships, it's asking ourselves, how do we model respectful communication? So do we listen without interrupting? That is a huge work in progress for me. I can't work out whether that is a cultural thing, or whether it's just part of my character, but the interrupting, I just get so excited, as you could probably tell from the podcast episodes. So I know that that's something that I have to actively work on. But listening without interrupting, being quick to apologize when we need to, treating others kindly, even when we're frustrated, being respectful of other people's opinions, and not trying to belittle them, the tone with which we speak to people. Now, this is not just about how we model respectful communication within our home. It's how we model respectful communication in our community, in a restaurant, in a supermarket, with cashiers, with traffic wardens, or you can just imagine all of those things. Our children are always watching us. And so if we model respectful communication, regardless of whether that person is a really close friend, or whether that's someone who's doing some work in our home, or whether that's part of any other, you know, day to day life experience, I think speaks absolute volumes. So that's modeling respectful communication. The second one is about how do we model healthy friendships? You know, do our children see us maintaining supportive relationships? And I said, I asked this, because I often talk about this idea that being a parent is one of many roles that we have friends, a friend is another, I find that often what happens is when we become a parent, we feel and of course, it's a super important role. But we often feel it's so important that we lose sight of all the other parts of what makes us who we are. And I wonder whether for a lot of us, we're not the same person, we're not the same person, and I know I was really guilty of this when the children were younger, I think I was better when they got older. But I wasn't great at maintaining supportive relationships, when they were baby babies, and I was going to lots of different groups and meeting friends with with young babies. But I think as they got older, when they went from that baby baby to everyone going back to work and doing normal things, I just don't think that I, I don't think my children would have seen me maintain those supportive relationships. I did not go out in the morning, I did not go out in the evenings, they were not babysat, they all of those sorts of things. So that those conversations around friendships just didn't happen. And children did not see that. So it's that question of, you know, do our children see us maintain these supportive relationships? And if we're not, maybe we ought to. And do we talk positively about our friends, and show loyal, show them what loyalty looks like? Do they see that? Do we have that sort of narrative of I mean, children certainly know have a long standing narrative of my school friends who i have known since i was 11 and so we are into the 46th year of knowing each other this year or 47th so there are certain aspects that they have definitely seen but i just wonder do how often do we do that so for our children to know what is a healthy relationship and a healthy friendship they need to see it modeled for them and some children will they'll have you know they will see that because you know you are great at maintaining those friendships and it may well be that when you listen to this podcast the friendships piece is actually something that you feel is pretty nailed down but i do think that the modeling respectful communication is something that we continue to do even if we are already modeling healthy friendships and then the last one is in terms of friendships is about modeling problem solving in relationships so how do we resolve conflict yeah so we disagreed so we talked it through so how do we model that problem solving and resolving conflict to our children whether that's in the home with our partner whether that's resolving conflict or problem solving outside the home do we avoid gossiping mocking blaming in front of our children so those are really important things because that because that the problem solving piece is also about taking ownership for friction for conflict and then actively modeling how we have made choices within our value system to then respond to them and i think that last one about problem solving and relationships can be quite a big one that i think is really helpful to sort of sit with for a little bit and reflect on so i hope that you have found those three areas really useful you know whether the whether you're going to dive into the academic modeling or the confidence modeling or the friendship modeling they're all going to be they're all areas and really quick and eat well not quick and easy but they are tangible things that we can do as parents that can really move the dial on our children's success in those areas and so if you have found it particularly helpful then maybe consider sharing it with someone that you know who may find some of the strategies they're super helpful as well and do look at if you have not yet followed the podcast then i would encourage you to do that if you want to do that you can do that if you have not yet followed the podcast then i would encourage you to do that you can do that if you want to do that if you have not yet followed the podcast then i would encourage you to do that if you have not yet followed the podcast then i would encourage you to do that if you want to ensure that the next episodes are automatically sent to your podcast library because what it will mean is that you'll get the episode that looks at the things that we can our expectations of our children again something very much within our remit of control how our expectations can then lead to our children's academic success their confidence and also their friendship so until next time at harmony bank we believe that better happens together
Speaker 3we're a locally owned bank built on relationships and personally committed to your success our community bankers are ready to make quick decisions no big bank bureaucracy just a custom approach to help you thrive from business loans to mortgages and everyday banking needs harmony bank provides a secure modern experience with a touch of texas hospitality we're harmony bank where better happens together
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