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Speaker 2Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. Today's episode, Becoming, the school years, we're looking at extending and expanding on the episode that I did. So, remember the first part of the series of Becoming Me, how our children develop. Their sense of self. So, I thought it would be really helpful, and I said at the time that I would do this, do some breakout individual episodes that are targeted at specific stages of that development of becoming themselves. And you'll remember that I used a framework of eight life stages. And the stages of becoming me are not just unique to our children. The lifespan and the eight stages go right into our older years and as we age. But of course, you know that you're super keen for me to drill down a little bit more. So, the first episode, I gave you a real overview of the various different stages, including the stages that related to us, because I also think that those are really important when we consider the stage that we are at relative to the stage that our children are at. But more on that in the more adult episodes. But I just wanted to talk through now and pick a very specific age, which is the school years. Now, when I'm asked to speak at schools and also when I'm asked to speak in organizations, I have always instinctively felt that there is something around the age seven to eight where the wheels are more likely, if not, to begin to fall off. And I don't mean that in a supremely dramatic way. But when I think about all of the families and all the young people I have ever worked with and whatever age and stage that they have come to work with me, particularly, obviously, after the age of seven or eight, sometimes I do work with younger children, but let's just assume that they've come to me at age nine, 11, 13, 16, 21, whatever it might be. When we have a discussion around why now, why look for support now, and we sort of almost do a bit of a back history, when did you first notice there were issues and other things, more often than not, so 99% of the time, we can trace back things not quite being right, even if they haven't resulted in, massive low confidence or massive anxiety, we can trace it back 99% of the time to something that changed, something that felt different around that seven or eight period. So to me, that's always felt like a supremely critical period. Now, it's not critical period as in you're listening to this and you've got a seven or an eight-year-old and you're thinking, oh my goodness me, now I need to do something. For me, it's much more that the cumulative impact of their life experiences up to that point can then often contribute significantly to what happens next. So I'm hoping that this episode, which covers pretty much from sort of five to 11, I'm always a bit cautious about giving ages because our children develop a different rates. So it's a stage of development and it all makes sense when I start speaking about the specific areas. But what I'm hoping to do is to help you begin to recognise that if your child has not yet acquired, some of these skills and I'm going to go even back to birth and some of the skills that we would love our children to have acquired by the time they have navigated in essence the end of their primary school years because it serves them hugely as they then enter into the adolescent stage and for most that transition to their secondary or senior school. If we have these foundations solid, then that means that the trajectory and the next stage that they have to navigate is easier. Doesn't mean that it's easy because every single stage we think about adolescence, that sort of working out who you are and how you fit amongst other people is a huge piece, but it just means that you're better equipped, that your foundations are reasonably solid. So if you're feeling a bit fragile, you're not knocking down the whole house. So if you are listening to this and you are listening and you've got a 13, 14 year old, please don't switch off. This episode is also for you because if you're 12, 13, 16, 18 year old is struggling, then it is probably we need to go back and make sure that we've got some of these robust structures in place. So this episode is for all of you. So for me, these particular sort of age and stages where confidence is really established and if our child successfully negotiates and I talked, I gave you a bit of a framework, I gave you a bit of a framework of a psychologist who uses these conflicts. He talks about there being a conflict between these two opposing forces. And if, if a child is able to negotiate that particular age and stage and successfully negotiate that, they then have a, what he calls a virtue and that virtue then goes with them to the next stage. And so what we're looking at when we're talking about these, the sort of these, the school years, we're talking about a conflict between, which in essence is competence and confidence against inferiority, which is helplessness and incapability. So successfully negotiating this means that we've got a real opportunity for our children to come out with a real sense of self-belief and a real sense of capability and a real sense of agency. But what I want to do is I want to just recap on the previous stages because it's, it's important that we add, these into, into this because that's what I'm going to be looking at. So you'll remember in the first part of the series becoming, I shared this theory about how we develop identity across our whole lifespan. And the eight stages are seen as conflicts between our psychological needs and our social environment. So we negotiate these developmental stages successfully. We then take that virtue to the next stage. So for example, a two year old who has successfully negotiated the infant stage of autonomy versus, shame emerges with more trust than mistrust, which they then take with them. So what happens is they take the virtue of hope into the next stage. So this idea that there's always hope, even if things are not necessarily going to plan. So for this one, this school stage that we're talking about, it's about industry versus inferiority. And in essence, our children, they're not consciously doing this, but by navigating this stage, they are, are they're working with this question, of can I make it? Am I, am I capable in the world with people and things? So they come away with this, that they're working their way through this notion of competence and capability. So do I have the competence? Do I have the capability and the confidence to tackle what life might present me both socially and intellectually? So by the end of this stage, so by the time our children have navigated the school age stage, our children's should have acquired three virtues. The first virtue was trust. The second virtue is autonomy. And the third virtue is industry, you know, one and two. So trust and autonomy are virtues from the previous stages of development, which I will cover. So don't do not worry, which is why I think this is such a important episode, regardless of the age and stage that your child is currently on. Because if your child is struggling with their confidence, if they're, if they're anxious, if they're feeling overwhelmed, if they struggle to manage big emotions, then they probably haven't yet acquired with great rigor, the previous virtues. They haven't got those as part of their armory, as part of their toolkit. And so we can, the five things that I'm going to talk about, the five skills, the five strategies that we can look at and the five top tips are ones that we can therefore begin to scaffold regardless of the age that our child is. Okay. So children, the idea is that when they come out of this, that they become, they're more aware of themselves and how competent they feel that they are, or they are not. So that's where the, this sort of stuff tends to sort of become a little bit unraveled. So what I want us to think about now is I want to go through the five areas that I believe that we can significantly impact our child's capabilities and abilities to navigate this particular stage and to come out of it feeling competent and capable. As well as making sure that we've taken with us that trust and that autonomy along the way. So I've got five. The first one is do what you say you will and being consistent in the application of that, regardless of whether it is something good or something bad. So let's think about this. If we think about that very, very first stage of development about trust and understanding that I have hope in the world and that I can trust that things happen as they say, that they're going to be. puts into sort of stark contrast or stark clarity why it is so important that as parents if we say we're going to do something that we follow through on that now that doesn't mean that if circumstances change if stuff happens in life which it does all of the time that we can't flex that but for children to feel safe to feel that there is some essence of predictability we have to provide that level of consistency we have to if we say we're going to do something if we say there's going to be a consequence to something we need to follow through now let's unpick this a little bit because obviously life happens and there are challenges to that all of the time and I think this is where you know if you've been listening to the podcast for for some time now I'm really a huge advocate of self-reflection I'm also a huge advocate on family meetings or just regular check-ins with our partner if we are co-parenting or our tribe and community if we do not have a partner but we're raising our children with the collection of friends neighbors and families and the reason why that's good is that we're human beings so we are very driven by our emotions we often make our decisions based on emotions rather than rationality we like to think we're rational beings we like to think we've weighed things up but more often than not we make a decision and then we post-rationalize it we say well I'm really I did that I decided to do that because of this this and this but we are emotional beings and as a result of that if we are not regularly taking time to reflect and by reflect I mean simply stepping back from the situation that we find ourselves in rather than digging in the pit we stand back and observe the pit and think about okay this is what I'm doing at the moment is this working is it not working this is what my child is doing at the moment how could I look at it differently what are the things that I'm currently doing how might I be contributing to the success of this so I could do more of it how might I be contributing to this not working and what is it about what I'm doing not beating ourselves up but being really objective that might then help this particular situation do I need to take care of me do I need to take care of my child is this a joy is this a both of us need some support whatever that might look like but just being able to take that step back in whatever that reflection piece looks like for you means that we're regularly asking ourselves the question am I being consistent in what I'm saying so am I saying to my child if this happens then this is a consequence both positive and negative and also am I following through on a regular basis because if we are that builds a certain element of predictability and trust for your child now that doesn't necessarily mean that the predictability and trust that you build is something that they're happy with yeah if you're like you cannot have a mobile phone until you are 16 and you consistently apply that doesn't mean your child's going to like it but they understand that there's a certain element of predictability and consistency with that for example you know if we're if we are consistent in that there's a consequence if x doesn't happen y happens and we apply that all of the time then that's good if we talk about boundaries you need to be home by 10 o'clock from your friends and if you are not back then there's a consequence in terms of whether there's curfews or an ability to go to other parties and we kind of go well they got back at quarter past quarter past 10 don't worry about it it's only 15 minutes then what we're doing is we're blurring that lines and then we don't necessarily our children can't then build on this notion of trust in their environment they know that things happen in that way so I think that would be the first thing that I would say because that helps our children build that solid foundation number two is we want to really think about how can we create a sense of autonomy because this is about feeling that they have a certain element of agency and they're able to act on things themselves and that hugely builds confidence so we want to build that create that sense of autonomy by giving our children choices but also the ability to act on things themselves seeing them in our minds as capable so it's a shift in our mindset if we consistently focus on it that will allow us to see opportunities to delegate tasks to our children so let me just go back on this because I think it's a really important thing for us to grasp it's not about just simply I'm just going to give my child choices but it's coming at those choices from a genuine wholehearted deep gut-wrenching belief that they are capable if only we afford them the opportunities and that's a big shift because obviously as a parent our role is to keep our children safe our role is to provide opportunities for them to grow you know it's about finding new new opportunities for them to develop skills it's about keeping them you know imparting all that we have so that they grow up to be these resilient confident adults I think sometimes though along the way we step in a lot when I talk about you know the common ways that we get in our children's way and we screw up our kids unintentionally is that we tend to look at them because they're young and we feel that they're vulnerable and fragile and when they're upset about their friends not playing with them or they're upset because they're not doing they feel that they can't do something intellectually or academically we almost approach this from this perspective oh my goodness it's my job to protect you because you're not capable at the moment what I'm encouraging us to do and it's not blind faith that is just like well my child you know my my four-year-old is perfectly capable of making a cup of tea and putting something in the oven if they're not but it is about requiring ourselves to answer the question regularly am I doing something for my child that they really are more capable of doing am I getting in their way am I overdoing things for them and as a result of that not providing the opportunity for them to grow so that's what I'm talking about in terms of that mind shift and when I talk about that what that happens is if we reframe it and it is a big it's it feels like a small shift that I'm asking you to do and it feels almost like Mary how are you going on about this it's not that big a thing but I do believe that when we approach it from the perspective of my child is capable my job is to find opportunities for them to demonstrate that what happens is suddenly when we go about our day-to-day things we suddenly ask us the opportunities and we think why am I doing this my child is more than capable of doing this I'm just doing it because I've always done it or my parents always did it for me and I haven't stopped to think actually my child is now x and they're demonstrating y and they're more than capable of doing that and when I talk about giving them things to do it's not about passing off workload it's more about believing that they have capabilities which we are stifling right now by doing them on their behalf so an example of this particular stage of becoming me could be that they're we're stifling that they could be making their bed they could be organizing their school bag they could be starting their homework they could be deciding what to wear when they're not at school all of these things that I mean the list is endless but if we shift it from that perspective of they're capable and my job is to find opportunities for them to demonstrate that and get out of their way and not stifle it then I think we look at things from a different lens it sort of contributes very much to this idea about this cognitive confirmation bias we know that our brain simply seeks out in the environment things that support our view and if if our view is my child is so fragile and they're not capable and my job is to protect them and they're just so vulnerable and they're just so young for example then we tend to all of the things that speak to that yet when we approach things from that lens of okay my child is perfectly capable my job is to find opportunities for them to demonstrate that and to get out of their way suddenly our eyes open up to a whole host of things that we could be delegating is the wrong word but providing those opportunities and stepping out of their way and I think that that has can have such a big impact and it's not about academic things if our children feel capable in all aspects of their life then that does transfer you don't have to feel that in order for my child to be confident and feel that they're capable academically I need to focus on that bit if you're hitting roadblocks with that if you've got a child who is regularly self-deprecating regularly saying that they're rubbish at their academics focusing on bolstering capability and confidence in other areas of their life will have that profound positive impact in the academic area as well it takes time and we have to part of that is managing our expectations so the first one is about being consistent and doing what we say we're going to do the second one is about really shifting our mindset to create a sense of autonomy the third one is about managing our expectations and now we're going to take a quick pause for a word from our sponsors and this is about really thinking about our role as parents and what we believe our role to be and also considering our expectations around risk, but also our expectations when we do that comparison piece. At this stage, particularly if you're listening to this, if you've got a young child who's in the early stages of school, for example, our expectations and in terms of what we believe that we could and ought to be doing to give our children the best chance of navigating the stage is often a focus around the academic piece and, you know, ensuring that they keep up, you know, that they learn their letters, that they're able to do their reading, that they're doing their writing and all of these things. And I'm not trying to diminish that in any way. I'm not saying that that is unimportant. But when I start working with a child who is really struggling with their confidence, and let's say that the confidence is really academic, specifically to the academics, and then that is having a ripple effect on friends. It's having a ripple effect on their ability to try new things. They've suddenly, you know, they have decided that they're just not good at stuff. And so they're avoiding at all costs. My strategy and my approach is always that their confidence and their competence and their belief in their ability to make change to the world being a better place because of them, regardless of what their external capabilities might appear to be at that time, are so foundational, that if we strip away all of the concerns around the academics, even if they are failing at school, and they're behind significantly, it isn't about doing more work or stepping up interventions in terms of tutoring and other things. It is all about taking that step right back, going back to the stages of competence and capability, and building that trust within themselves. And that ability to try things and feel that they can be capable. So part of that is about managing our expectations so that we are regularly checking in with ourselves and we're not getting sucked in to that. My goodness me, all of the other children are doing far better. They're reading X and they're doing Y and they're doing all of these extracurricular activities. And oh my goodness me, they're never going to do well because they're struggling with their confidence and instead think, I'm staying in the lane of my child. What does my child need? To bolster their belief in their capability? What might that look like? And how can I help them with that within our home? What are the things that they can do that will bolster that capability in terms of giving them that sense of autonomy? What are the things that I'm doing for them that is stifling that confidence and that capability developing at home and really nurturing and building that so that you are then able to begin to transition those skills that they've acquired? onto other areas? So it's about managing our expectations of them. Number four is about praising effort. And this is a really big one, I would say, because we've got the opportunity when we're navigating this particular stage of their self-belief and that self-identity and that who am I, is that being really mindful, because I think sometimes the praising, the outcome just slips in without us realizing it. Now, I've shared this before. But I'll share it again for those of you who've not heard me share this on a particular episode. I can remember a very, very vividly a moment where I was aware that we were praising the wrong thing as parents with our eldest and the shift that we then had to do. And again, it came from a place of love. It wasn't that we were being intentionally making, you know, creating issues. But what would happen was when our eldest, our son was first at school and we'd get a term. Or whatever, however regularly we got the school report, we would always now we're thought like we're praising effort. We were looking at the effort grades. We weren't praising the, you know, the actual attainment. But we were like, oh, my goodness me, you've had such an incredible report. You've done so well. Let's have a treat. So and it happened and we did it on that. And of course, we enjoyed praising him and he loved the praise. And the treat was all it was always really lovely, whether it was a meal. In fact, it was a meal. more often than it was a gift. So it was this idea about experiential. But what struck me, and I genuinely can't remember how many times, I would say at least three, we had done this at least three times. It may well have been four. But we then got one particular report and it was literally handed over. Initially, we had sort of been handed the report. We'd sat and read it with him. We talked about it. But on this particular occasion, the report was simply handed over and it was like, I did really well. What's my treat? And then it was this moment of, oh my goodness me, we've been sending all of the wrong messages that actually you're doing well. Your effort seems to be, we've given you this belief that it's contingent on our approval, rather than it being like, I've worked really hard and I'm so proud of myself. And I can still remember. And my children will still, not that I don't feel traumatised, but they do say this, that in the end, what then would happen was your reward is the satisfaction that you work really hard. And it was something that we said, I can even remember this in their teen years with GCSEs and A-levels. It was like, oh yeah, what's the reward, mum? Oh yeah, being really satisfied that we worked hard. But it was a real light bulb moment of, my goodness me, I really thought that in our actions, what we were doing, what we were doing, what we were doing, what we were doing, what we believed we were doing was reinforcing the effort because it was the effort part of the report that we were focused on. And we were focusing on experiences much more than gifts. When we weren't saying, if you get a, you know, we felt we were not saying, if you get a really good school report, then you're going to get X. But we thought we were sort of rewarding it post event. But what the, what the message was coming out from our behaviour was simply, when I do X, I get Y. And in lots of ways, yep, we were being super consistent. As I said the first time, you know, there was predictability. He knew what was going to happen, but what it didn't do was build that sense of self-belief, that sense of autonomy, that self-pride that I've done really well because I've worked really hard and my teachers have recognised my effort and I'm, that feels really great to me. Now that doesn't mean that we shouldn't reward our children. Of course we want to be able to them for their effort. But what I'm saying is don't do that on a consistent basis. When it becomes predictable like this, in essence, I was, we were reinforcing the outcome, not the effort. It should have been more random. So great, super impressed. First time we've ever done that. You can see how hard your efforts have gone and you should be really proud of yourself. And then maybe done it, I don't know, two years later. It doesn't have to be, it shouldn't have been on that regular basis. So it's about being aware, again, why I'm a super fan of stepping back, looking at the hole rather than being in the hole, is are we being consistent in praising our children's effort? And the reason why we bang on about this idea about growth mindset and praising effort is as our children get older, with every age and stage that they have to navigate, life gets harder and they are going to come across more and more challenges, whether they're personal challenges, whether they're social challenges, whether they're intellectual challenges. When we focus on outcome, we do not build or flex that muscle around failure. That failure is an inevitable part of learning. That when we try, the process of trying means we are going to fail. Things are not going to go to plan. And by praising effort, we are creating this sense it's simply about being in it rather than that final outcome of getting it right. So having that opportunity to just step back on a consistent basis to ask ourselves that question of, yeah, I think I'm praising effort, but let me think about the things that have happened over the last few weeks or over this academic term. And am I staying true to that? Am I providing opportunities for my children to try things and fail? And then praise the failure and praise the fact that they gave it a shot and how incredible that was. And what's the learning, but the learning from the experience rather than the learning from not hitting the target. So number four would be praising the effort. And then number five is about creating varied opportunities. And this includes within our community. Our children fundamentally are, in this particular age and stage, they're not going to be able to do the they're developing this sense of competence and capability. And we don't want to stifle that by restricting it within the academic field. The whole sense of this particular stage is that I, as an individual can make it in the world and the world is not school. The world is not family. The world is the wider community. So when we are thinking about what opportunities can we afford and what activities might they be involved in? Let's broaden that to think about. And obviously it depends where you are geographically and how easy this is to access, but there is so much confidence and competence and capability that can come from our children helping within their community do we have people who live on our street that our children could help by feeding cats or dogs while they're away do we have elderly people who are on their own that our children could help by going in and reading to them or just being really creative and expanding rather than this sort of nuclear thinking about you know what can my child what opportunities can i provide my child either at school specifically outside school or within our family in our extended family but really think about how might i create opportunities for my child to see the world that they're going to inhabit in a in an age and stage appropriate way that will help them build that competence and confidence in that really lovely broad way rather than making everything possible very specific to how can i make sure that their academic cv looks as good as possible when they then leave school and they're applying for university it's really being creative with this because i think those areas and and often we do we may well do that just simply by you know our children might be involved in cubs and scouts and and brownies and girl guides that are much more community based and then they will go away on camping trips and things like that but it's i just want us to broaden that because and particularly i think it's a really important particularly around different aged people within our community because those different ages bring with them a huge amount of a wealth of knowledge a wealth of experience that our children can learn a huge amount from and because they're not parents to our children our children are much more receptive to hearing those stories and learning about their lives and and the various different iterations of their lives that then helps them create their own lives and their own lives and and build that sense that you know people have multiple careers for example or people face adversity that i cannot conceive of facing and yet they got through it at the other end it's all of those aspects of why we talk about you know it takes a village to raise a child because we can enrich their experience and then build that confidence and competence by making sure that the where they're collecting their data from is really suitable for them and that's what i'm super varied so just a final recap on those five so number one is being consistent do what we say we're going to do good and bad creating that sense of autonomy by really thinking about the ways that we're getting in the way what things that we're doing that our children could do instead managing our expectations keeping that in check with reflection really praising effort and stepping back regularly to check in how are we doing that and do we need to tweak it and then finally is creating these varied opportunities and particularly considering our community now i will be tackling adolescence as a whole episode in itself and i will be tackling preschool as in all children below the age of five in another episode so do look out for those that will be coming out very soon as ever if you enjoy listening to the podcast if you are new welcome and do pop over and have a look at the free resource library which has got lots of free resources and lots of free resources and lots of resources across all of the podcast episodes that i have done four years we've been going so there's a lot of resources all you need to do is head over to www.drmaryhan.com forward slash library if you pop your email address in you'll get instant access to all the resources so if you're new welcome if you are not new if you've been listening for a while then why not share this episode or another episode that you've listened to recently that has helped you because if it's helped you it will no doubt help another parent out there so if you're new welcome if you're a parent who will be very grateful for that and if you have time just a couple of minutes to rate and review the podcast that helps other parents find us so that we can spread the love so until next time
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