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Speaker 4Hello 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 66, and today we're tackling comments like I'm not very good at. Dot, dot, dot. It's all those comments our children make about not being good at something. What does it mean, and how can we help them? Now, you're in no doubt familiar with some sort of comment like I'm rubbish at, I can't, I'm not good at. Something along those lines. It might not be the exact same phrase, but your children have said something like that. So, your children have come up with something that is similar to that, and either they're doing it all the time, or they're doing it in certain situations, and I guess the question is, what does it mean? Well, there are a number of potential options. I've come up with six. It is not an exhaustive list. It could be more. The first one can be, is that they just need some sort of reassurance from you. And so, they're making that comment. Maybe it comes up with every single new thing that they try, or everything that they do, they don't think they're particularly good at. So, they're saying it because they need some form of reassurance from you. So, it might simply be that. The second one is that it could. It could be that they're actually generally lacking in confidence. They don't trust their own ability. They don't have that inner belief that they can do something particularly well. So, it could be that they need that reassurance. It could be that they're lacking confidence. It could be that the comment is coming out because it's a comparison to others. So, when they say, "I'm not very good at, I'm rubbish at, this is awful. I'm always not very good." Really, in some ways, it's that relative to other people. So, the comment is actually about a comparison to others. By comparing myself to others, I don't feel that I am as good, and therefore, the work that I'm doing is rubbish. So, that could be a third sort of possibility. The fourth one is that they're possibly trying to manage your expectations. So, this could be about, "I just want to tell you that I'm not really good at this, because I don't want you to think that I am going to do very well. So, if I don't do very well, I don't want you to be disappointed. So, I'm going to manage your expectations now and just simply tell you." So, that you know, "I'm not very good at it." Or it could be to manage your expectations as in, "I'm not very good at this. I'm not particularly enjoying it. So, please don't ever make me do anything else like this again." So, it could be that one. Another alternative is that they're nervous or they're unsure, or they cannot express their emotions adequately. So, it's a trigger response. You know how sometimes our children say, "As do we as adults." We've got habitual comments, something that we always say, when we're not really quite sure what to say in a particular situation. So, it could be that actually our children are saying that they're rubbish or they can't, or I'm not good, because that's easier for them to come up, because they can't actually express "maybe". I'm finding I'm in a really unfamiliar situation, and I'm not quite sure what's going to happen, and I'm not really sure if I'm going to be any good at it. But I don't know how to articulate that. So, instead, I'm just going to say that I'm rubbish. So, it could be that, or it could be, as some parents, as we all have been in a situation where we're thinking, "Do you know what? You just want attention." That's what all it is. You're just saying that because you just want the attention of, "Oh, you're not rubbish. You are amazing." Now, it could be any one of those six. So, it could be that they need us to reassure them, and that that's okay. It could be that they're lacking in confidence, and we've got a fundamental confidence issue. It could be that there's a constant comparison, so they think that they're rubbish by comparing to others. It could be that they're trying to manage our expectations in some way. They could be nervous, unsure, or finding out it difficult to express their emotions. Or they might just want attention. And whichever one of these it is doesn't actually really matter. Now, we are going to try and unpick it, and I think it's really helpful if we do, because then we can actually look at something long-term in terms of a long-term solution. But the principles that I'm going to go through with you, the sort of the six things, my sort of six top tips, it doesn't matter which one of these it is. I think long-term, we want to kind of try and unpick that and work that out, because I think that'll be great. But it doesn't matter. The fact that our children are saying these things, or doing whatever it is that they're doing, is telling us something about how they are experiencing that situation in that moment. Now, we need to remember our children are much more present and living in the moment than we are. We're often doing something, but our head's elsewhere. We're thinking of our to-do lists, we're dealing with something else on our mind. So we're not always experiencing things in that present moment. But children are insanely present, which is why their emotions are so huge, because that lack of confidence in a particular situation, or telling them they've got to go to bed, or switch off the television, or get off their iPad, they feel that pain in that moment, because it feels overwhelming. They're not thinking, "Well, I know I'm going to be able to use my iPad later." I know that this situation is going to be short-lived, and therefore I'm going to feel much better afterwards. They're not like that. So we need to remember that our children are much more present than we are, and so that when they have this big emotion, they feel it intensely. So what can we do to help? Now, the first thing that I would say that we need to try and remember, and this is not one of my six top tips, this is just a background, and that we just, from a context perspective, the first thing we need to remember is that our child is trying to tell us something. So avoid being accidentally dismissive, because we don't do it deliberately. We don't want to poo-poo our children's feelings or tell them, "Oh, I was going to say, don't worry about it. You're absolutely fine," or, "Oh, you're so silly. You always think you're rubbish at everything, but you know you're not. You're really good at it." So let's avoid being accidentally dismissive or overly positive. I say that with love, because I am an insanely positive person. My children quite often complain about the fact that I'm like, "Oh, it'll be amazing, and you'll make great friends," and all of these sorts of things. Now, that might be what we fundamentally believe, but in that moment when our child is experiencing an intense situation where they're feeling that they're rubbish, that I'm rubbish at making friends, I'm not very good at art, whatever it is, I can't swim, whatever that feeling is, it's not going to be helpful if we then try and say to them, "Oh, by the end of the day, you're going to have made lots of new friends, and you're going to be so good and your art is incredible." I think we need to avoid that, because it's not sort of helpful sort of longer term. So here are my top six. And I've sort of put them in a little bit of an order. So the first one is listen. And I mean, really listen to what your child is saying. And what I'm talking here is not use both ears because you've got two ears and one mouth, no. What I'm saying is, listen not only to the words that are coming out of their mouths, but what's going on with their body language too because this will tell you something about why your child might be saying what they're saying so remember the approach is exactly the same we want to sort of deal with it in exactly the same way but it is useful long term if we understand you know does my child have an inherent confidence issue and actually do i really need to be working on their inner belief system is my child just someone who needs a little bit of reassurance and once they're reassured they're absolutely fine have i got a child that is constantly comparing themselves to other people and actually their benchmark is not their benchmark but that of others is it that they're trying to manage my expectations and in which case do i need to do some work on how i'm communicating with my child what i'm expecting is it that actually they're nervous they're unsure or they can't articulate their emotions adequately so i need to be working on how they express and they communicate so that they're so that their emotional vocabulary is there or do i have a child that for whatever reasons feels they're not getting enough attention how can i best address that and quite often i'm going to go off on a tangent just for a moment but this concept about getting enough attention and i hear this a lot is that we'll say but i give my child so much they i'm with them all day and we do this and we do that children are like parasites i love them i love them so much i love i love them dearly but they are parasites in terms of our time but time it's not about the amount of time we spend with them genuinely it really isn't it's about how engaged and fully present we are and we have to ask ourselves this question quite honestly and just ask that question of yourself really honestly you may have been with your child for three hours for example how much of that were you 100 fully present engage with them doing something that they feel is of value and that your brain hasn't been elsewhere you haven't been thinking about your to-do list you haven't had your phone pinging up with work emails you haven't been trying to cook something at the same time or fix something or deal with your the younger sibling or whatever it might be because children crave attention but when they get us our undivided attention in specific periods of with boundaries around them that should avoid our children doing things that then seeks more so i'll sweep that one on and we'll come back to that because maybe that's another podcast that we need to do actually what is about how much time and attention and we have got a podcast coming up about working as well so we really want to listen to our children not only in terms of the words that they're saying but their actions because this will help us actually work out which of these six things is triggering this constant narrative, this constant chatter, this constant verbal outward commentary that is always dismissive of their ability or always makes the assumption that they're not very good at it. So that's the first thing that we want to do. The second thing we need to do is acknowledge how they feel in that moment because we want, we need to validate it. It doesn't matter what we think, in that moment our child feels that they are incapable or they're not as good as or the piece of art that they've done is rubbish or their ability to make friends is rubbish or their speed is rubbish or the quality of their work is rubbish. So we just need to acknowledge. I can see, you know, I can tell from what you're saying that you really don't feel that you're as good, that you're, that you're capable of this, that this feels like something that you're really not very good at. Don't then go in and say, but you're amazing, look at all of this art that you've done, look at all of these, your reports that show how amazing you are at school or look at this. Resist the but, but simply acknowledge and then try and clarify exactly what it is that your child is experiencing in that moment. So say, look, just to help me understand, tell me why you think that you're rubbish at this. Tell me why you think you're not very good at this or if your child is comparing themselves. It may well be that your child will give you a very obvious reason of I'm not as good as so-and-so. Then ask them, I really want to be able to understand this. Tell me what makes you think that you're not as good as, and please, please resist the temptation to interject some positivity in there and say, oh my, but you are incredible. And you know, Ms. Johnson says you're wonderful. And so-and-so says you're really good. Really try and avoid it. We're almost, I don't know if this helps you, but you're, you're doing a bit of a fact-finding exercise. You need to know, you need to have that information first before you can do anything else. So we want to really listen, not only to what our children are saying, but actually look at their body language so that we can understand what they're saying. What we then want to do is acknowledge how they feel in that moment and then seek clarity from them about why they feel that particular way. What makes them say that? With that real, I really want to try and understand. Explain to me why you do that. The third thing is be realistic about the situation that they're in. So this is not about positivity. This is about the fact that maybe they are trying something new for the very first time. Maybe they are starting a school for the first time and they think they're rubbish at making friends. Let's be realistic. Yeah, maybe they're finding something really difficult with their academic work or their social skills or anything. Let's not dismiss it and say that you'll be fine or, you know, everyone gets a bit nervous, but you'll make lots of friends or you'll, you'll do really great at that activity because you've, your so-and-so teacher has said this. Be realistic about the situation. Say it's really, it's really tough when we start learning something new. And quite often we find that we aren't really good at it and that's okay. Yeah, we're not trying to interject, but you'll get better. But just let's be realistic about the situation that actually is going to be difficult. Maybe if our children are starting a new school and that they are probably going to find it quite difficult to make new friends because they're getting to know people that they don't know. And there'll be an element of that kind of trial and error. And so it's okay to feel sometimes that you're not particularly good at it. To be realistic. It's not about helping them wallow in the negativity, but by acknowledging how they feel and the experience that they're having and then being realistic about the situation that helps our children think, right, they get this. They really understand where I'm at. And then your children are much more likely to listen as you then try and help and coach them through the problem-solving aspect of, right, okay, this is how I'm feeling. What can I actually do?
Speaker 1And that's exactly what growing feels like. Exactly what Grow Therapy is here for.
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Speaker 4That's joinmidi.com. But when we launch into. You know, what can be quite typical parent? Oh my goodness me, my child is in pain or they really think that they're rubbish and I know they're incredible. Why can't they see how incredible that they are? And then we try and sort of like layer on this praise and wonderful positivity as if we're kind of, you know, putting some icing on a cake. It doesn't stick because our children don't necessarily feel that there is some substance to it because we haven't really understood the problem. And we hear, I hear this all of the time with children who say to me, but they don't understand. My parents just don't get it because we are trying to then sort of model this positivity or layer this positivity on. And what you'll often get is children will then say things like, well, you're bound to say my art is really good because you're my, you're my parent. Or you're bound to say that I'm going to make friends or that I'm a really good person to be around and I'm fun to be with because you're my parent. You're bound to say that I'm really good at maths or that I'll get it in the end because you're my parent. So we have to do, we almost have to mentally say to ourselves, can I tick the box that says I have actually really listened to my child to try and understand what the problem is? Have I truly acknowledged their experience? And if I have, I'm going to say, well, I'm going to say, well, I'm going to say, how they're feeling in that moment have I been realistic about the expectation so actually for them they understand that that situation is not meant to be easy because let's face it life isn't easy so many of the hardships and the problems and the difficulties that we have as adults and our children have as children is an expectation that life should be easy that we should find things easy that things should be okay that we shouldn't experience ups and downs that nothing bad is going to happen well if we shift that expectation to being realistic that god failure is a part of life we have to fail multiple times when our children learn to walk they fall on their bottoms they bang their heads they scrape their knees how many times but at that age they just pick themselves up and they get on with it so we have to be realistic excuse the slight rant there but I think it was an important thing to say so we're listening we're acknowledging we're being realistic so those are the first things that we need to be realistic about first three we're setting those scenes now we can place their current experience the current experience that they're having into the broader context yeah because it's really important that what we don't want to do and I talked about this on a previous episode is that we want our children to understand that one challenging situation doesn't mean all situations will be the same or one setback or failure or challenge or difficulty doesn't mean that all failure will be the same we want our children to see the setbacks as related to that specific situation rather than an inherent aspect of their personality and let me kind of just sort of explain this a little bit more because I've talked about this in a previous podcast episode about this concept of shame what tends to happen is when we've got children who are really struggling and particularly around confidence and resilience and or anxiety is what typically happens is they're not able to see that something that they found difficult or something that they failed at or something that they've not been very good at is just specific to that one situation and that one context what tends to happen is what we can talk about maybe is this sort of generalization is that they generalize that that one setback and that one failure can be generalized to all things that they do which is often what happens when I'm not very good at so okay so maybe we've asked they've been asked to sketch something maybe they've taken part in an activity hockey camp or netball camp football camp and they have particularly struggled in that situation maybe they've struggled to make friends maybe they've not enjoyed it maybe they've gone away on a school residential trip and they found it really difficult maybe they've gone on a sleepover you name it whatever it is what we want to make sure our children understand is that that current experience or what the challenge that they're talking about is that they've been asked to sketch something maybe they've taken part in an activity is just one experience in something that is that is somewhat broader so that they are going to experience setbacks that they are going to try things and they're not going to work out the way that they had planned but that's just one situation on that particular day with those particular people in that particular place with that particular activity whatever that might be we're trying to help them see that broader context and trying to discourage that view that that that has become inherent and actually i am the failure rather than in that situation i found it challenging and that's a really important thing to do so it's not again we're not layering on and plastering on praise and positivity here we're talking about the fact that that's part of a broader picture so you know there are going to be situations that we're going to find particularly difficult when it comes to friendships we're not always going to find them easy some things we will some things we won't but most things we won't and quite often we will try different things and they won't necessarily go to plan and that's the same for everybody if you've got a child that's comparing themselves then you have to get real with them and be honest with them that they may feel that other people are getting it right they may feel that other people are feeling confident about something or or appearing to be super confident and not having an issue but that actually those other people are also having their own challenges but in that particular situation it might not be the case so we want to make sure that we can place their current experience into that broader context and then reference them back to things that they personally have been more successful in so we want to make sure that we can offer them that broader perspective because that's a really important you know we've acknowledged and done all of this we're now asking them to place it in the correct context the broader context before we then move on to the actual what can we do about it i mean these are all things that we can do about it but but in terms of equipping them with other ways by helping them do that so the first one is listening the second is acknowledging the third is being realistic about that situation so we're setting expectations the fourth is about placing their current experience into a broader context the fifth is a is the kind of uber on the ground tool that they can pull out and this is all to do with helping them manage their internal dialogue yeah their internal dialogue the narrative is then coming out verbally all right and it's really important i feel so strongly and so passionately that we need to be helping our children with our internal with their internal dialogue because the internal dialogue dictates what they say out loud and what they constantly hear and say to themselves and that is absolutely what creates their reality if they are constantly criticizing themselves and saying that they're not as good they're not as good as anyone else or that they can't do something or they're rubbish at something whatever that is that eventually seeps into their very bone their very being and so that's when their world becomes more insular and they're much less likely to try new things so we really want to help them it's not about and i know i bang on about this a lot but it's really important that we the negative chatter and making it positive it's about taking the chatter that limits them that stops them from that belief that they can have a go understanding what that chatter is and then setting a more realistic and pragmatic alternative that then becomes a mantra it becomes something that they can say to themselves over and over again that chips away at the i can't and the bit that parallels them that sort of that that paralysis that they feel or that autumn you know that automatic default i can't i'm rubbish i'm not good as other people are better i'm a failure and helps them momentarily pause or create a slightly different reality so for those who've not sort of new to the podcast you probably you know go back and listen to some of the episodes where i talk a little bit more about some of the things that i've talked about in the past so i'm not going to get into too much detail but i'm just going to go through some of the things that i've talked about so for those of you who've been listening a while this will be helpful so we have an internal voice that narrates and for children is the bit that gets in the way of them trying new things on the one side that they've got their voice of their inner critic their ogre some books call it an inner bully not a big fan of that term but this inner critic that says i can't i'm rubbish i'm not good as all of this stuff okay when our children are in a situation that they don't feel that they're very capable that's the chatter that they can hear and that's the inner critic that they can they do have an alternative voice the voice of their best friend the voice of their cheerleader they're in a wizard fairy best friend whatever it is that they've got this is this this is the pragmatic voice that isn't cheering them on and saying you're so incredible you can do anything because that's the positive chat that's not the kind of chat we want this is the voice that says i know this feels really scary i know you feel that you're not particularly rubbish at it i know you may be comparing yourself to others and thinking that others are doing better but you've got this things will be hard at the beginning but they'll get easier with when you try this situation is similar to that situation and whilst that felt really scary once you got started you were absolutely fine that's the internal chatter so we want to help our children identify that internal chatter identify and write down what is that critical stuff that comes out that makes me say i'm rubbish i can't i'm not good at and then look at well what might be a alternative why do i think i'm rubbish at this because that will help also help us identify whether they're looking for this reassurance whether they're lacking in confidence whether they're comparing themselves to others whether they're trying to manage our expectations whether they're nervous unsure or they can't actually express how they're feeling or they want attention so it's helping them with that internal dialogue and the final strategy strategy number six and you know it's coming if you've been listening to me for a while be mindful of what you model so if you're using a critical voice if you're constantly saying i'm rubbish at tech i can't do this i'm not good at that everyone else is better than me at this then that's where you want to say to yourself right how can i be more mindful with the language that i use and catch yourself we're not meant to be perfect perfect parenting does not exist but if you can catch yourself two times out of ten When you're saying that and you're modeling something that you really don't want to be modeling and you're criticizing yourself and you're saying that you're rubbish and you're saying you're not very good at and you catch yourself and you say out aloud to your children oh I can't believe I said that you know and then talk about this oh why am I saying that and then talking about that's my inner critic again saying to me that I can't but I know that actually I can when I really sit down and do it I'm just feeling a bit exasperated by it maybe I'm feeling a bit frustrated maybe I'm comparing myself so you don't have to be 100% perfect but if you're able to pick yourself up a couple of times out of the 10 and then actually outwardly verbalize that rather than inwardly chastise yourself and berate yourself and think oh my goodness me I'm so terrible why did I do that I'm messing up my children you're not by simply acknowledging that and and doing that shift in front of your children that is supremely helpful because you're modeling that catching and then that becomes another tool and strategy that you can teach your children so my give this week is going to be these top six strategies in a checklist with space so you can reflect underneath whether these are things that you're particularly familiar with that you can start implementing with your with your children and the idea is by having it as a checklist with some space it serves as a reminder and also a tool so that you can practically use it so as usual go 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 other podcast episodes as ever 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 blood donation is now more inclusive more lgbtq
Speaker 2plus individuals are able to donate blood with the american red cross due to fda guidelines that eliminate eligibility questions based on sexual orientation the red cross celebrates this historic change and welcomes those who may be newly eligible to donate blood there's a place for everyone in the mission of the red cross blood donation is now more inclusive more lgbtq plus individuals are able to donate blood with the including you the red cross is committed to achieving a blood donation process that treats all potential donors with equality and respect while maintaining the safety of the blood supply join us and help save lives to learn more and make your appointment to donate blood visit red cross blood.org lgbtq that's red cross blood.org lgbtq
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