Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not To Screw Up Your Kids podcast, the bucket emptying episodes. I'm your host, Dr. Mary Han, psychologist and parenting expert. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. Today's bucket emptying is a reframe that I'm hoping will probably help a little bit more in terms of us not pulling our hair out quite as much, but also the reframe helping us really come up with practical solutions and make changes. And that reframe is away from considering certain aspects of our children's behaviours as being a character flaw and instead reframing it as a skills gap. So, let me give you some examples. Now, we've all been there, haven't we? When we have become super frustrated, we've all been there, haven't we? When we have become super frustrated, super frustrated, we've all been there, haven't we? When we have become super frustrated with our child or our teen because their room is messy. Maybe we can't even see the carpet or the wood or whatever the floor is because there's stuff everywhere. Maybe we're frustrated because they're leaving things constantly to the last minute, whether that's homework, whether that's laundry that needs to be done, ready for some particular event or thing. Maybe it's a school slip that sat in their bag that they haven't told us about. Maybe it's something we need to sign. Maybe it's an invitation to a school. Maybe it's a presentation. Or maybe the frustration is that they seem to be constantly lounging, whether that's on the sofa, whether that's in their bedroom and they're watching programme after programme or just simply lying there. Or maybe we're frustrated because there's non-stop tech use or constantly asking to use tech. Now, when I'm talking about a reframe, it's taking some of these things which we inherently then find ourselves getting sucked into, this making a judgment in some ways about our children's character. Now, whether that's we think that they're lazy, they're disorganised, they're unmotivated, they're slovenly, whatever it might be. And we end up becoming really annoyed and really angry, particularly when these things never seem to change. So my question here is, what if we reframed the issue and rather than seeing it as a character flaw or a character change, we simply saw it as a skills gap? Now, that doesn't change the fact that your child has a messy room or that they leave things to the last minute or they lounge around all day or they want tech constantly. But I believe quite earnestly, actually, that when we change the way that we look at the situation and the challenge and the problem, it actually helps us find a workaround or a solution more easily. Because we're focused on the skill that they're missing rather than the fact that they're constantly creating this problem. It's a real, it sounds like I'm being a bit pedantic and it sounds like, you know, it's a bit like, why are you going on about it, Mary-Han? It doesn't change the fact that my child is always disorganised or always leaving things to the last minute. But I do think that when we reframe it, it makes a big difference. So let me give you some examples. For those four that I talked about. So with a messy room, we could see it as a gap in organisation, a gap in capabilities around decluttering, a gap around spatial awareness, or it could be that they've got a procrastination skill as such, the putting off. And then when we look at it that way, so for example, it could be fundamentally that your child isn't able to organise things. Maybe they've actually got too much stuff in their room. Maybe they haven't got a system by which that they can put things in, or there's not a very clear system. Maybe what they have in their room, by the way of drawers and wardrobe or whatever it is, requires them to do it in a very particular way that isn't consistent with the way that they think or the way that they might go about organising things themselves. So we move with the messy room scenario, we move away from, crikey, I've just got a child so lazy, they've got no respect for the space that they've got, to then considering the way that their room is organised that will enable them to put things away in a little bit, in a straighter way rather than throwing it on the floor, might not suit their particular character or their personality or the way that they would go about things. And then it's a very different way of resolving the problem. So that's the messy room. If we look at the leaving things to the last minute, if we reframe that, rather than it being somebody, you know, a child who just is, oh God, they're always at lastminute.com, they're so unorganised, it could be that they genuinely have an organisational gap, or they have a skills gap around understanding how to prioritise. Too many things to do, they don't understand which thing is more priority over another thing so that they choose the wrong things and therefore some things which have higher priority get left to the last minute. Maybe they've got a skills gap in terms of diary and or time management. Now, can you see that instead of getting this frustrated, why do you always leave things to the last minute? Why don't you make sure that you do X, Y and Z? Instead, our focus can be actually maybe Jack doesn't actually understand how to go about prioritising things or being able to understand how to place things in within the day and then it becomes about a skill, a skills gap that we help bridge them with a Jack, let me just sit down with you. Notice that quite often things get left to last minute and I get that you've got a million and one things to do and sometimes it can be really difficult to juggle all of those things. So we could then look at skills around maybe writing, having a notebook somewhere where they write down all the things that they need to do so that they can and then then redoing that list in terms of order and priority. Can you see how we take something that is incredibly frustrating and rather than us being in that scenario where we're constantly saying the same thing and then expecting our young people to be able to immediately know what they need to do, where our focus and our lens becomes much more around, right, what are the skills that this child is missing that I can help them so that they're no longer leaving things to the last minute or if they still are that it's not happening all of the time with the most important things. So that's the messy room, that's the leaving things to the last minute. The lounging on the sofa or the constant state of lounging in their bedroom could be a skills gap around being inquisitive or just being resourceful or it could be around managing energy levels. It could be that they're genuinely depleted of all energy and actually they don't, it's a conversation around how can they maintain and manage their energy levels because it could be that they're having highs and lows in terms of sugar crashes. It could be that they're not finding ways of being able to recharge themselves appropriately so that they're then fuelled for all of the other things that they need to do or it could just simply be that they're bored and they haven't got the skills to then think about other things that they might be able to do, right, so it just becomes this default of just lounging. So again you can see how we take something that we might think that they're lazy and we can shift that emphasis and instead focus in on those skills. Non-stop tech use could be a skills gap around basically just not being content in their own head. So it could be that there's a skills gap in that I'm just not really good about being in my own head. I'm actually, I have a skills gap in that I'm just not content doing nothing. I have to fill the gap with something all of the time and so that crutch, that default has become the tech. I'm hoping that that is a helpful way of us beginning to sort of reframe some of these things because fundamentally the problem doesn't go away. We still have a problem to fix but rather than it being this broad problem of just like how do I get Jack, how do I get Sophie to stop being lazy, to be more organised, to not leave things to the last minute, to not be this slovenly individual and instead we start thinking about what's the missing piece and what that also does is it allows us to approach these skills gaps compassionately when we have a child who may not be neurotypical because instead of seeing it as innately being a flaw, particularly if you're somebody who is super organised, you don't leave the last minute, you're very tidy and instead we look at the child, who they are and all of the qualities that they have within themselves and then we start looking at how can we help them meet them where they're at rather than expecting them to be like us. So I hope that that's a really useful way of looking at things and the reason why I think it's such a useful bucket emptying is that actually when we consider it in that context, the level of build-up of frustration within us then gets dissipated a little bit because our emphasis and our focus is on what we're doing and what we're our focus is very much on how can I now with my child being they are begin to bridge that gap at a reasonable pace because if you if you had a child who had a skills gap in any aspect of their academic skills you wouldn't expect there to be an overnight shift you would understand that there is a skill that they need to acquire that they need to practice in order to be able to bridge that gap and that's exactly what I'm suggesting in this particular situation so I do hope that that's a that that's helpful and do write in and let me know how you've been able to kind of implement and shift that reframe because it's always helpful for me to know how these strategies get used by you at home as ever if you enjoy listening to the bucket emptying episodes if you enjoy listening to the longer form episodes as well then I would be so grateful if you could rate follow and review the podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love so until next time you
PodcastTranscript AI