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Speaker 3Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and enjoy the conversation. This episode, Apathy and Bed Rot Part 2, I'm going to address the very specific challenge of changing our children or our teens' learnt behavior. Now, remember, this is a two-part episode. So, I'm diving straight. Straight into strategies to shift the learnt behavior in this episode. It is really helpful to understand some of the context behind why do we get apathy and bed rot in our children and what might be the root causes. So, I would really encourage you to listen to episode one, the one before this one, as well, if you're looking for a proper belt and braces approach. Because the strategies I'm going to share with you are crucial. But if. If there are some very specific causes, you need to be addressing that alongside the strategies that I'm going to be sharing with you. So, let's start initially. I guess I want to just set the scene for you around how do we change this. I've already had lots of email feedback about this particular episode context, this apathy and bed rot, and how it's really hit the mark for a lot of parents. It's something that a lot of parents are struggling with all year round. But. They seem, obviously, more of it when our children are at home for longer periods of time, whether that's school holidays and this sort of thing. So, I know it's really hitting the mark and I want it to be as useful as possible. So, the context, I think I want to sort of set out with you in terms of managing expectations before we move into my sort of five steps as to how we can kind of shift this pattern of behavior. I've just got three things that I want you to bear in mind. The first one is. It is going to be a bumpy ride and it won't happen overnight. Now, you may see a huge difference at first, but don't become complacent. You may also see no shift. So, it's remembering that it's going to be different. But if you do see a huge shift in the right direction, don't become complacent because there will be kickback. There will be setbacks and there will be weariness. So, manage your expectations and keep up the right habits that we'll talk through. So, that's the first one. The second one is choose your start date carefully. You need to be fully committed to making changes and standing by whatever plans you put in place. If you start some of these strategies and these new ways of approaching things and then concede. You start and then you concede back into old habits. You are, in fact, in a worse position than doing nothing. Just leaving it as it is. And I'll explain why. Because by starting and stopping, often multiple times, it primes your children and your teens to this notion that my parents never stick to any change in expectations. So, all I need to do as the child or the teen is I just need to simply ride out whatever it is. It's the new thing that they're going to try. And I'll be able to go back to how things were before. So, with this in mind, I would highly recommend you do your research, your conversations with your village of co-parenting. That might not just be your partner. That might be grandparents if they're also actively involved. If maybe you've got wider community, neighbours, mentors. So, really do that research, that planning, that discussion as meticulously. as possible without going over the top. But it's worth doing that so that when you do start, you're able to fully commit. And that might be, you might have to wait simply because, I don't know, maybe you've got older children. They're able to look after themselves for a period of time. You have to, you've got some really big deadlines in terms of work. And you just can't be on top of it. There's no judgment here. It's just simply if you want to make the changes, you have to have the time. Available to you. And so, you are much better riding the apathy and bed rot that little bit longer. And then making that commitment at a later date than starting. Thinking that you could probably impact enough change for it not to cause an issue. And then you find yourself conceding. So, first one, brace yourself. The second, choose your start date carefully. The third one is consistency is key. Do the same thing. Ask the same thing. Expect the same. And over time, you will see positive changes. Start small and build up. It's easier to maintain consistency that way. Of course, we want to see grand changes. Of course, we don't. You know, you may well have a child that's sort of lying in bed for an entire day. Or certainly what feels like an entire day. You're not going to be able to move from that to them spending three quarters of their day doing other things. We need to start small because it's much easier for us to be consistent that way. It also means that it minimizes the resistance. It's the whole, if you did the whole kind of sales technique or have done any sales stuff when you were younger or in earlier iterations of your career. It's the whole foot in the door. If we can get my foot in the door and we can begin to see some change, it will then help. Because then it requires less energy, less vigilance than these big changes. The time. It will take you to sort of exact these changes will be directly proportionate to the length of time you've had the issue. Because remember, we're trying to break learnt patterns and the neural connections that have been built as a result of that. While simultaneously at the same time creating new neural pathways, which require sustained effort. So just keep up that kind of consistency. And I guess I haven't got a fourth one here, but as I'm saying this, the fourth one I said, I guess would be make sure that you build your village. The people that are going to support you, not necessarily in terms of implementing this, but just in terms of there being a tribe, a village, a community for you to have conversations with about the challenges that you're facing, how it's making you feel, what's worked, what hasn't worked. It's just important to be, to surround yourself with people. People who understand what you're going through and are there for you to lean on and to talk to, particularly when you're sort of feeling exasperated and you're like, nothing is working. How could I be failing my child? I'm doing something wrong, whatever that might be. So that's the context. Let's now dive into what are the things that we can do to stop the rot and begin to move in the right direction. So I've got five things that I want to talk about. The first one is. We need to start by changing our expectations and communicate this effectively. In other words, it's no longer acceptable to lounge in beds or on sofas all day. That's our expectation. And we need to explain why and what our expectations are. Sounds easy. Maybe. I don't know. But please avoid a long rant or a lecture or. an angry exchange. Communicating our new expectations is not something that we ought to be doing on the back of us getting frustrated with them because they're in bed rot or they're being apathetic. It's something that we have as a constructive conversation at a neutral point, maybe at the dinner table, at a point that is not already fuelled with exasperated emotion from us and a child or a teen who's actually otherwise engaged, either streaming something, watching something on their device. So we want to make sure that we're having that conversation where we're not already at an elevated emotion, because that's likely to mean that the way we communicate it comes from that exasperated, oh my God, I'm so fed up with you. You're always in your bedroom. And it means that we're much more likely to approach it from a compassionate, kind way that doesn't have that, well, it means that we're less likely to go into lecture mode or rant mode or emotional mode. What we want to do is simply state that we are their parents and it is our role to best prepare them for adult life and life beyond home. And maybe we've done them a disservice by allowing some of this bed rot and apathy to date. And we want things to change. We know that things need to change so that we can be the best parent that we can to best prepare them for the future. And so that we can be the best parent that we can to best prepare them for the future. And so best equip them. And as a result of that, this is going to be our new expectation. So it's a simple communication. It's not a long rant or lecture. And if you have been following my advice for some time now, you'll know that I'm a big fan of these Sunday meetings where we get the family together and we review the week, what's been, what's worked, what hasn't, the challenges that are upcoming for the next week and how we might problem solve as a family together. In order to resolve any pinch points or challenges. So it's that kind of conversation. So that's the first one is just simply, we are no longer going to expect it to be okay for our children to lounge around in bedrooms, on beds, on sofas, or doing nothing for the entire day. I will talk a bit further down about what's proportionate in terms of time. But the first thing is just expectations. We get what we expect. So that's number one. Number two is we need to understand the root cause for our child, for our specific child. And we need to address those specific issues if it relates specifically around confidence, anxiety, exhaustion due to overscheduling. The strategies that we're going through are strategies that you need to put in place or ought to put in place, regardless of the time. So we still need to address it. But if you've got a child who is anxious, overwhelmed, lacking confidence, they're using bed rotten apathy as a way of avoiding life.
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Speaker 2That's joinmidi.com. Sessions average $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the U.S. Offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average.
Speaker 3Whichever aspect of life that might be, whether that's social interactions, whether that's putting themselves into new situations, learning something new, any of that aspect. So of course, we also need to be working alongside and building that resilience, helping them build their confidence, putting in place small challenges around anxiety and helping them feel the fear and do it. And I think that's what Grow Therapy does. We do it anyway at small levels because the root cause of their bedrock and apathy is that fear, but we also have to manage the expectation. So you're still going to do all of these things, but concurrently, we ought to be also addressing what might be that root cause because it's a learned pattern of behavior that has either been a survival mechanism because I'm fearful, because I'm anxious, because I don't feel confident. I'm going to self-select to remove my self from that. And this is how I've learned to cope, or it could just simply be I'm bored and I don't really know what to do with my time. And so actually I'm just going to do nothing. We still need to address the learned behavior, but we also need to deal with the root cause. If there is some underlying areas that need to be addressed, they need to be supported. They need to be scaffolded alongside these strategies. So the first one is we need to start by changing our expectations. The second is around understanding the root cause. The third is now we're getting to the nitty gritty specifics is we want to agree a proportionate amount of time to be spent not in bed, not locked up in bedrooms or on the sofa rotting or being generally apathetic about things. Now by proportionate, I mean relative to how long your child or teen typically does nothing. For example, if they wake at 10 AM and they don't shower or freshen up or get changed before 1 PM, that's a total of three hours, 180 minutes of which we want 10%. Yeah. So we want to take a proportionate amount relative to the amount of bed rot that they need to be doing something else. And I think a foot in the door, small starter, manage expectations is 10%. So that's 18 minutes. Now I know some of you may well be thinking, but my child is in bed all day while getting food, which they may then take up and eat in their room or eat on the sofa. I hear you. We want to be objective in our bed rot calculation and how we portion it across the day. So 10% is a good start point and tends to work better when it's spread across the entire day. So morning and afternoon or morning, afternoon and evening. Now you may be listening to this and saying, do you know what Mary Han, my child does nothing all day. That's like 12 hours, 15 hours, 20 hours because they barely sleep. So I would highly recommend a week long audit before you decide on time, because it may well be that they're rotting or the apathy could be less than you think. So I would highly recommend a week long audit before you decide on time, across the whole week. So maybe they sometimes do meet up with friends, hang out downstairs, watch a film, do something useful in the house or in the garden, whatever it might be. Quite often when we're at our highest stress, agitation and irritation around bed rot, it's usually on a day that they've done a disproportionate amount of it. But it's, we have to be objective when we look at it across the whole week. So my recommendation would be to look at that 10% and then look at that and have that split. It's better that you start breaking the habit a little bit in the morning, a little bit in the afternoon and potentially a little bit in the evening, even if it's just 10 minutes, because it breaks that cycle. And actually 10 minutes by the time they've done that, there would have been a, you know, there's, there's time leading up to them coming out of their room, getting off the sofa, going back. So you put, you get more. But it just, it's about breaking that cycle. We need to do that first before we can then expand it. So if you need to do a little bit of an audit, if you need to do a little bit of a, how much is happening actually realistically across the day, then that's, that's a useful thing to do before you begin to instill that. So we're starting by changing our expectation. We're understanding the root cause and dealing with that. We're agreeing a proportionate amount of time. Number four is we discuss how they might use that time. I've written. written in my notes in capital letters, do not tell, ask. The non-bedrock time is non-negotiable. What they choose to do with it is entirely of their choosing and should not include a device. So it may well end up with a strong-willed, super heel-digging child or teen as simply sat downstairs, armed, crossed and complaining. You know, of course, it's boring, what's going on? Yeah, let that be it. Do not engage. You've made the clear expectation. You've agreed a proportionate amount of time. You don't need to get into a conversation around, well, you could be doing some sketching because you've got an art portfolio to put together, or you could be helping out, or you could be playing with your sibling, or you could be being more active, or you could be. So let's not get into that in the moment. We can have discussions in advance about how they might use that once we've set the expectations around that proportionate time. But in that moment, when they are having that non-bedrocking time, if they choose to be belligerent, if they choose to be provocative, if they choose to be sulky, that's their choice. Do not engage. It really is not part. That is not what we're trying to do. In time, you will get less of that, and they will find something to do. And to be honest with you, if they just sit there with their arms crossed, complaining, eventually over time, they're at least getting 10 minutes or 15 minutes or whatever it is of actual just being present in that moment. And that's precious in itself. So you discuss, but don't tell. So that's number four. So we've started by changing our expectations, understanding the root cause and dealing with that if we need to. We're agreeing a proportionate amount. We're discussing how they might use that time without engaging in any challenges that come our way. And the fifth one is agree the ground rules. And this for me is all about pulling it together. It's not forgetting that we're having this communication, but we just need to pull it all together. So how much of the day needs to be spent not on beds? Or lounging on sofas or being generally apathetic? When in the day is this going to occur? And crucially, what are the consequences if these expectations are not respected? We need to be mindful about the language that we use. And I have got an episode coming up around how do we build a communicative relationship with our children and our teens. But we need to be mindful of the language that we use. You know your time. You know your time. You know your time. You know your children. So if we use language around, you know, expectations and they don't follow them or our rules aren't met, and you've got a child or a teen that you're constantly battling with around boundaries, change the language that you're using. Change the language around this. The idea is that we all share a home. We all contribute to that home. And we all contribute to the well-running of that home. And part of that is that we all share a home. And part of that is about respecting expectations and respecting others that live in that space. Not just around making good, but about being respectful of other people and what it takes to have a cohesive, collaborative community within your home. So just be mindful, which is why so often it's better to pause a little bit before we have those conversations. Or it's better to pause and audit. Before we set our expectations, think about the language that we're likely to use. What are the personalities of the children and the teens within our home? How might we best get them on board? You know, what's the language that jars you as an adult? Some adults and parents don't like to be told what to do. And in lots of ways, I try to be mindful of the language I use when I say, you know, you need to do this, or you ought to do this, or I would encourage you to consider. And our children are no different. Some love very clear, defined boundaries communicated in a very clear and directive ways. Others will rile against it, gets their back up. How dare you tell me what to do? I'm 13, I'm 16, I know, or I'm six and I think I know what I want and I shouldn't. I have my own voice and I have my own expectations. So it's really just being mindful of how can we get the best? How can we get the best? And I think it's communicate things and really bring our children and our teens on board with us rather than battling head to head with them. So agreeing those ground rules and being mindful of the language that we use can be super helpful. Now, as ever, I'm going to give you those five strategies in bullet points with space for you to consider what might be some of the language that you need to use to work out your own little calculation on that third one in terms of agreeing a proportionate amount. It may be that when you do the calculation, 10% might be actually a little bit too difficult to deliver initially and you go to 5%. What I'm really asking you to do is to consider what was workable for you in terms of being consistent. Remember the initial, you know, how do we set ourselves up for success? How do we get a proportionate amount that will work for all of you and a small amount that can be consistently applied, can be consistently expected, that we can consistently hold our children to account and ourselves to is much more effective than trying to go all in on a larger amount that we start off really well with and then find ourselves unable to follow through. So to grab that template, just head over to my free resource library, drmaryhand.com forward slash library, where you'll find the link to download the resource. All you need to do is pop in your email address and you'll get instant access, not only to this week's resource, but all the other free resources across all my podcast episodes. As ever, if you have enjoyed this episode, I would be eternally grateful if you could follow, rate and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love. So until next time.
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