Speaker 1Hello 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 is episode 36 and today I want to talk about children's willpower. Do they have it? And if they do, how can we harness and improve it? Now, before I get started, I want to remind you that at the end of each episode we've changed the format. So, at the end of each episode I will be answering one parent question which has been sent in. So, stay tuned right to the end as the questions are all common ones which I get asked a lot and so you're going to want to know the answer and you might also have the added bonus of hearing your own question. So, let's get cracking. Now, I like to think of children's willpower as like a rechargeable battery. It starts the day full and slowly drains away to nothing before sleep recharges it for the next day. Now, how quickly your child's battery runs flat depends, I guess, in part on their character but also how much their willpower has been used throughout the day and whether they have been able to regularly visit a recharge station. So, if we think about a typical school day, it can massively deplete our children's battery very, very quickly because they're naturally going to recharge their batteries very, very quickly because their natural tendencies to maybe let their mind wander, to fidget, to talk, to have a conversation, to sort of move around, to maybe answer a question when they haven't been asked it and play take a great deal of willpower to control and suppress. It's all of this impulse stuff, isn't it? This is why most children are reluctant to start their homework as soon as they get home because they've had little or no charge left in their battery. So, I want to talk you through five simple ways we can ensure our children's batteries have enough charge to get them through their day. So, I'm going to talk you through five simple techniques. So, the first one is to ensure that we give our children regular breaks. So, research has shown that when children go from one perceived unpleasant task to another, so let's talk about this, it's all to do with perception. I've talked about this before, certainly when we talked about this in relation to anxiety. There's a difference between what we actually see and what we perceive and we've got to get ourselves back into this mindset and remind ourselves of this. So, there's a difference between what actually is happening, the reality of a request for our children to do something and how our child perceives it and perception to all of us creates our reality. If we see or perceive a task to be unpleasant, cumbersome, burdensome, boring, uninteresting, we're going to respond to it in that way. So, we have to kind of switch ourselves out of rational brain as parents when we're saying, well, God, why can't you just see if you just crack on with your homework? The sooner it's done, the sooner you can finish and crack on with something else. Our children don't see that because their perception of it, the way that they view it, the kind of narrative around it is different. So, we have to remember that it's how they perceive it. And that's therefore, you know, when our children are coming back from something that they may perceive as unpleasant, as in doing their maths or their English or having to sit still or pay attention or write or control their impulse to talk to their friends, that's an unpleasant task that they feel they've been doing at school. And as soon as they come home, we're then asking them to do another unpleasant task in their perceived way. So, when they shift from that, their willpower is low. So, we've got to be mindful of that and therefore try and avoid asking children potentially to start their homework as soon as they get home from school. Instead, maybe we can give them a chance to recharge their battery and that might be for different children. So, recharging may well be a food thing. So, they downtime that they can basically do something themselves, whether that's play, zone out, change, so that they can then recharge ready for homework. And it may well be a combination of things, but that's part of what we need to do. So, we need to make sure that our children get regular breaks. And what I would say, it is really important within this regular breaks that we look at our children's schedule, because if we know that willpower is a battery and it's discharging, children are having to use a huge amount of their willpower and their impulse control at school. And then we have a child that is doing an after-school activity, maybe every single day after school, that may well be having a negative impact on them. So, when we're talking about regular breaks, it's not just regular breaks from when they come home from school, but regular breaks within the week. And if you haven't listened to my podcast episode around why it's really important that children play, then do so. And if you haven't listened to my podcast episode around why it's you go and listen to that, that one's episode 34, because it's a really important part of this piece around willpower and impulse control, and this notion of giving our children regular breaks. So, the first thing, one simple strategy is ensuring that our children get regular breaks during their week and also when they come back. So, it's having an agreed homework time, but also an opportunity for them to visit their recharge station and top their battery up. So, that's number one. Number two is play games which promote success. And number three is self-control. So, it's this idea about impulse control. Willpower is part of impulse control, their ability to pause before responding in a particular way. And so, games can be great at that. So, we want games which encourage our children to listen to instructions and then suppress their natural instincts to behave in a particular way. And they're fun ways of just practicing self-control, whether that's as basic as musical statues, we can do that or you can switch to other games that encourage them to maybe manage that sort of impulse control one game which I created it's a really simple game which I think is really really helpful I mean the game is brilliant on multiple different levels even if I say so myself pack of cards so this is how the game works you simply need a pack of cards and what you do is you fan out the pack of cards so that your child is seeing the other side of the cards so not the actual cards themselves so they can't see the king jack queen one two but they're seeing the back of it so you fan them out in your hand and you ask your child to select a card so they select a card and you can see it they can see it but they they read out the card so maybe it's a four of hearts or an eight of clubs or a queen of diamonds whatever it is you're basically they're picking a card they're identifying what it is your child can be really young they just need to be able to understand and be able to see the image and be able to recall it so they don't necessarily need to know the difference between clubs hearts diamonds but the essence is that they're sort of viewing the card they're understanding what the card is looks like and then the object of the game is that they simply have to call snap place their hand on it when they see the card again so they've picked a card they've remembered what the card is the card has been placed back into the card deck you then shuffle the cards and then you start now if you're doing this for the first time go at a reasonably slow but steady pace so you've they've seen that they pick the card they know what the card is you put it back in the card deck you've shuffled the card deck you then turn over one card at a time on top of each other so that they can see the card and you're simply doing it at a steady pace one by one and all your child has to do is basically put their hand down and say snap when they see their card and what's great about this is so brilliant for impulse control self-control so you can do this for willpower you can do it for memory you can do it for all sorts of things that help our children sort of control that impulse because clearly they're desperate to make sure that they get the card when it when it turns up but they have to avoid putting their hand down when it isn't the correct card and so that's a really really great exercise if you want to extend and expand that then you simply get your children to choose more than one card so they might choose two cards and now they've got to remember two so you just up the ante based on the age of the child based on how much impulse control you want to get them to practice and it could also be great at sort of just being a memory game where the children have to remember which cards that they've pulled out but that's a really simple game and it's just helping them with that impulse control so we want to make sure that we give our children regular breaks we want to help and make sure that our children play games which promote self-control and then the third one of my five is reward your child's ability to delay gratification now we've you may or may not be familiar with the famous marshmallow experiment which was done by a famous researcher psychologist michelle and you may have seen it on a television program but if you don't know what the marshmallow program the marshmallow experiment is let me explain it to you researchers asked children to sit in a research room and where there was a single marshmallow and the children were simply told they could either eat that one marshmallow however if they could just wait until the researcher came back and that would just be a few minutes that they would then not just have one marshmallow but they would have two so this is this whole concept which is really important about delaying gratification rather than getting what I want now which is a smaller one marshmallow if I delay that gratification by just a few minutes then instead of getting one I'll get two which is really great at helping children with their battery their willpower and their impulse control so that was basically what Michelle's experiment was about and what he found was when he followed these children into adulthood later he found that children who were able to delay gratification did better across a multitude of measures in terms of their social and emotional development in terms of their status in terms of job status salary and their reported happiness so it's a really important skill to help promote so we want to create an environment where waiting for what we want is in some way rewarded so instead of us responding to our child child sort of every need immediately we potentially want to foster an ethos of waiting now it's not about waiting for waiting sake or being unkind but it's simply encouraging our children to wait rather than have that immediate gratification and I think that this is probably a strategy that we need to be using more than ever and again particularly with teenagers we know the world of social media notifications ping and pop and our children respond or feel the need to respond almost immediately that a notification comes up so it's really great and in an age where everything is immediate and now and busy busy busy it's great to try and encourage and promote this so some simple strategies that we can use to help our children with their gratification just off the top of my head might be I don't know such as not snacking before meals because they're delaying gratification it's like waiting for the meal maybe saving pocket money so if your children have pocket money maybe encouraging them to save for something rather than always spending their pocket money as soon as they've got it so maybe those sorts of things or doing you know helping around the house and agreeing to do some specific tasks which might earn them money potentially to buy something that they're working towards things like not interrupting when you are talking etc it's all of these things that promote willpower reduce that you know minimize that help with that impulse control so our children are taking those moments and help them with this concept of delaying gratification because it's such a key and important aspect so we're talking about making sure that our children have regular breaks from when they come home from school they have a regular break as well as during the week so it's maybe looking at our children's schedule are we ensuring that they've got enough time during their week to recharge themselves it's having games which promote self-control and my card game is one example and rewarding our children's ability to delay gratification and trying to set up scenarios where that's delayed too I think is really helpful the fourth is about promoting the right mindset so this is about being consistent in our in rewarding our children's efforts and we're talking about promoting the right mindset so this is about promoting the right mindset rather than outcome because that way we help build a mindset which sees practice as key to success so it's this concept of growth and fixed mindset when we praise outcome so the end result we're creating this notion of a fixed mindset that actually it doesn't matter how I do things or what happens as long as the outcome is right if the result is what I want then it doesn't matter how I got there when we praise effort we're rewarding and creating this sort of inherent understanding that it's the process that we go through, the effort that we put in, the practice that we do that is far more important than the end result because the end result might not be what we had hoped but we've learned a lot along the way by simply practicing. So no one is born with infinite willpower. It's something that we've got to practice regularly if we're going to master it and our natural impulse is to seek out pleasure. We want to do that naturally, of course we do, and we want to naturally avoid a task which we see as chores or tedious or boring. So if we encourage this notion of practice, if we encourage this praise of the process, then we encourage and help and support our children in that way as well rather than regularly focusing in on the outcome. So giving our children regular breaks, playing games which promote self-control, rewarding our child's ability to delay gratification promoting the right mindset and then the fifth one which you possibly would have already guessed is about modelling emotional regulation. As I say so many times children are much more likely to do what they see than what we say. So how we deal with emotionally charged situations teaches our children important lessons in self-control and willpower. If we fly off the handle when we sit in traffic or something breaks when we are teaching our children then we are creating this model of this is how you deal with these particular situations. So we're teaching our children to act impulsively. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not preaching, I'm not blaming, I'm not finger pointing. Of course we're going to lose our temper. That's a natural part of parenting. We are going to completely lose it sometimes when we're sitting in traffic or someone cuts us up or we're becoming frustrated with our laptop or our computer because it's not doing what we ask it to do. But as long as that is more the exception rather than the rule, if it's not then necessarily the norm. If we model to our children that we are frustrated and we're not trying to disguise that we're frustrated that we're sitting in traffic or that we're going to be really late or that the technology is just not working. But if we state it in that level of the annoyance and the frustrations but we model that we're frustrated that we're sitting in traffic or that we're going to be really emotional regulation, our children then see and learn to accept that challenges are a part of everyday life. That actually it's about how do I manage things in that moment, which is all about our willpower, our ability to manage those impulses. So it's not about behaving in a way which isn't human, which isn't part of who we are, but it's making sure that more often than not, we express the frustration and almost talk it out. loud. I'm really frustrated and annoyed that we're sitting in traffic because we left the house late. We're now in a situation where we're probably going to end up at school late and that's going to mean that I'm going to be at work later than I wanted to. And that really makes me quite angry because it's not how I want to start my day. So that's perfectly acceptable. We can be frustrated and annoyed and we can have conversations afterwards about what we might do differently. How might the children make sure that they're ready? But we're demonstrating to our children that we are able to manage that impulse to become losing that temper and become angry in a way that just isn't helpful. So let's recap those five. So we want to make sure that we give our children regular breaks. So when they come home from school, but also when they're transitioning within the home. So we may have given them a regular break. They've come back and then they've done their homework and now they're playing. But we also want to help them take a break. From that next transition, maybe to going up to bed. So it's making sure that they get those regular breaks during the day, but also looking at their week and their weekends to make sure that they've got those regular breaks. We want to look for opportunities to play games which promote self-control. I don't want you sort of feeling that you've got to sit and every single night I must play a certain game with my child because that's going to help recharge their battery and help teach them how their impulse control. That's not it, but it's about actively giving opportunities to play those games when you can. So don't let it become an all-consuming thing. So we're giving them breaks. We're finding games which promote self-control. We're finding situations and maximising situations where we can reward our child's ability to delay gratification so that we don't always drop what we're doing in order to do something for our child that they learn to wait. When you look at, for those of you who've got more than one child, we didn't delay gratification at all. The minute they squeaked, we pounced on them. We did what they needed to do. But with each child, they've had to learn to wait. So in lots of ways, second, third, fourth, fifth children have learned that delaying gratification because they've had to. There's been demands, competing demands with other children, but we want to try and create those opportunities where we can. And particularly because I think it's so important in a world of high demands of perceived need for us to respond to things instantaneously. It's really important that we learn to hold fire, to wait for there to be a bit of a delay before we ease that need, scratch that itch. I think it's really important. The fourth is about promoting the right mindset, this notion that it's all about the effort that we put in and it's a work in progress rather than things becoming instantaneous. And it is that whole reminder that we, model that level of impulse control regulation and also our willpower. And our children will see that as the norm. So it's really important to check in with that as well. So my give this week is a checklist reminder of these five simple strategies. So they just serve as a reminder and maybe a little bit of a prompt. So we head over to my free resource library at drmaryhan.com forward slash library, where you'll find a link to download the resource. So as ever, 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. So this week's parent question is all about help. My child won't talk to me. They won't open up. They won't discuss things with me. So how do we resolve this particular situation? Now, I know the temptation is that we want to, we want our children to talk to us, we want to ask questions about their day. We want them to open up. We want to help. We want to be part of that process. We're keen to find out so much about their day, but we have to remember very much in this idea about willpower and impulse control. Our children have had a full day's worth of work, much in the same way as we've had a full day's worth of work. And they don't really necessarily want an interrogation. I know you're not interrogating them, but they see it as an interrogation. So really, if we want our children to open up, have to create opportunities for them to be in a position to want to talk to us about things. And for me, it's always about creating opportunities by not being face to face, grilling them about things, but instead having conversations. So it's conversations where you might be side to side. It might be conversations where you're in the front seat of the car driving and they're in the back seat. And you're talking about random, inane, nothing in particular kind of conversations, rather than how was your day? Who did you play with? What did you have for lunch? What did you learn? Your child is going to give you an instantaneous no. So instead, create opportunities. Get on the floor and play a game with your child. Sit with them if they're going to be on their Xbox or their iPad. Sit with them if they're scrolling through something on social media. Find out what these funny memes are that they keep laughing at. Connect at their level, meet them where they're at, and then you're much more likely to engage them in the conversation. And then don't pounce on any responses that they have, but simply be inquisitive. Ask questions. Do it in a natural way, and then your child will open up. So that's a much better way of approaching it than simply asking them lots of questions. So if you'd like me to answer your question, then head over to my website, drmaryhand.com forward slash podcast. Scroll down to the which allows you to send a voice message to me. Press the button, simply record your question, and when you're done, the wonderful technology takes care of the rest. And it will pop through to us, and your question may well be on the next podcast episode. So as ever, my usual plea, if you have enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you could follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love. So until next time, bye. Next time.
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