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. Today's episode, a step-by-step guide to changing behaviour, this episode is intended to be a helpful walkthrough for any parent who's trying to help their child make an empowering change in behaviour. Now, whether that's managing their emotions better, building their confidence, reducing worry and stress, or increasing motivation and a sense of responsibility. I talk a lot about using a ladder as a framework for making small changes of behaviour or goal setting. It's a way of working towards a higher goal. Now, remember a ladder by its very nature, it's a tool that gets us from where we are to where we want to be. So, the bottom rung of the ladder is where your child is currently and we want to help them take step-by-step up the ladder each rung through small changes which they consolidate before they then move on. Now, I've had a listener request, to work through an example. So, to make it easier, what I thought I'd probably do is actually, I'm going to work through two common issues parents ask me about all of the time and I'm going to literally walk you, I'm going to hold your hand, step-by-step all the way up to how you can use the ladder for these two particular examples. Now, obviously, if these examples are what you're currently grappling with, amazing, obviously, because I'm going to give you exactly what you need to do. If it's something else that you're currently working with, then use the examples that I've given you because the same principles apply, you just need to apply them to your particular situation. So, the two examples I'm going to use because they're the most common that parents ask me about. The first one is about how do I help a child in terms of increasing their confidence. Now, that's too broad. So, I've gone super specific. So, I'm looking specifically at a child or a teen who becomes painfully shy, mute or supremely awkward in social situations. So, that's one example I'm going to give you. The second one is a lack of motivation. Again, super broad. So, let's go specific. This is a child or a teen who doesn't apply themselves to their schoolwork. So, this is the classic one that parents say they're super bright, they're capable, but they just simply don't apply that. They're not motivated. They don't get work done when they should do. So, those are the examples that when we go through the ladder bit, I'm going to talk to you through really specifically. Now, I'm going to incorporate my ladder strategy with the principles of Kaizen. Now, Kaizen is essentially a method, a Japanese method of transforming habits one step at a time. So, you focus on, one particular aspect or skill that you want to improve and then you sort of break it down and you kind of work and you practice at it, improving every single step of the way and then feeding back. Now, it's typically used in the sort of business productivity space and more recently, it's moved into the educational space for teaching children. It's perfect to use with the ladder strategy. Now, I'm going to talk you through the six stages for Kaizen, which form the first part of the ladder strategy. And then I'm going to talk you through the two real life, the real world examples as we apply them specifically to the ladder. So, let's look at the six steps of the Kaizen method. And the first one is that you identify problems. So, what are the problems that you've currently got? Number two is then you identify areas that are being used. Bear with me, it can be applied to children. The third one is you then create solutions. So, this is very much the problem solving. What are the solutions? Remember with this specific thing, we don't know necessarily what the solutions are. We are problem solving to basically test. We're acting like mini researchers, mini experimenters. We're coming up the kind of the problem solving, the creating solutions is like coming up with a set of experiments that we're going to try and we're going to see what happens. So, step four is you test these solutions. We've problem solved. We've come up with some ideas. Now, we're going to test it, see if it works. Then we measure and we analyze the results. How did it work? Did it work? Did it not work? Do we need to tweak? Do we need to do the same thing again? And then number six is you standardize the solution. So, it becomes a new habit and then it's easily repeated. Then you go back to the start to choose another problem. So, when you get to six, you standardize the solution when you find that that is effective and it works, right? So, we've got the six principles of Kaysen. We've got these two specific examples. So, now let me apply the Kaysen method with the ladder strategy specifically for the real life example of increasing looking specifically at this child or the teen who becomes painfully shy, mute or awkward. And I've chosen specifically social situations. So, the first thing we need to do is get super clear on what situations creates the current response. So, we've got a current response of this being painfully shy, mute and awkward. Now, we've got to ask ourselves and this might be a bit of an example, but it might take us a little, maybe it takes a week to gather the data. Is this pattern of behavior across all social situations or ones which are new places, new people, unfamiliarity? You want to get real clarity. The ladder works brilliantly and is super effective and can be even more effective when you've got really clear about what the problem is. The time that you spend, really understanding the problem in these earlier stages are so crucial and you will definitely, it's worth the time because when you come to create solutions to test for your hypothesis testing, they'll be really based on working from the foundations of what the problem is. Unfortunately, what can happen with the ladder, if you go in too quickly and trust me, I am someone who typically likes to jump in both feet first, let's give it a go. But if you don't really take that time, you don't really identify what's getting in the way of your child behaving or responding in a different way. And so, you're really building the steps of the ladder or the problem solving that you come up with doesn't really address the root issue. And so, either you have a ladder that is just never going to work because it doesn't address the root cause or you're just going to, it's going to take longer to get there. So, really invest time and effort in this, you know, real analysis and data gathering. So, ask. If your child is at school, then ask for information there from their teachers. How do they respond in different situations? If you've got a younger child who's in nursery, then get that information. If they do after-school clubs or it's really gather as much information as you can from as many different places. different people. So, what you're doing is you're getting a really clear picture about the situations that this behavior presents itself. So, you've got some real clarity about the situations. So, that's the first bit. And in my experience, what typically happens in these situations where there's a lacking of confidence and you've got a sort of a painfully shy or mute or awkward in those situations, it's often around new situations, new people that it can be compounded for some either way. It can either be compounded by small groups because then they feel that there's an intensity of people looking at them and that fear of judgment and worrying if they do something wrong. Or it can be about too many people and just being overwhelmed by just the sheer numbers. So, let's get super clear on that. So, that's the first bit we need to do. Then what we're looking at is what's the pattern of behavior that your child is engaging in when they are presented with those situations. So, yes, we know they're being painfully shy and mute and awkward, but what's the pattern of behavior? Are we seeing avoidance? Yep. So, if they're older, do they avoid those social situations? Do they get angry? Do they become quiet? So, we want to sort of have a look at that bit. But what we also want to dig deep in, and this is really crucial to building the steps for our ladder. is around what are the stories they are telling themselves around that situation. Whether that's judgment, people are looking at me, I may make a mistake, I'm different, I don't feel confident, everyone else is X or Y. So it's get really clear about what's that chatter, what are the stories that they're telling themselves about those particular situation. And also, how does their body respond physiologically? Because the narrative and the physiology are the two things that are working together to create the anger, the avoidance, the awkwardness, the quietness in those particular situations. So remember the seesaw that I often talk about. So imagine a seesaw. When our children are in a situation that they feel confident and capable in, their seesaw is equally balanced. What they perceive are the demands being placed on them by the situation are equally matched and met by what they perceive are the resources they have within them to manage it. So this is happy place. When our children are stressed, overwhelmed, anxious, or lacking in confidence, their seesaw tips, what they perceive are the demands being placed on them by that situation are so heavy that they're not matched by their perceived resources. So when our children are in a situation which is quite light, so you end up with this skewed seesaw, almost imagine what it was like when you were a child and you went on a seesaw with a cousin or a friend who was much taller than you. There'd be one side that was absolutely weighted down by this older cousin or friend, and you were kind of like left in the air. And that's basically what happens when their seesaw's out of balance. And what is crucial, remember, with the seesaw is all about perception. It's how your child sort of assesses that situation. And the heavy demands bit is the narrative. It's the stories that they're telling themselves about that situation. And the resources bit, the bit that's hanging in the air is what they perceive, what they believe that they have within them to cope. And so it's really important that we get super clear, what's the conversation? What are you telling yourself about this situation? And how do you your body physiologically respond? Where do you feel it in your body? And lots of children will talk, particularly younger children, will talk about butterflies or feeling sick or a horrible feeling in their stomach, heart beating fast. Some will have sweaty palms, some have jelly legs. It's all of those sorts of bits. And of course, when you're feeling that way physiologically, it completely explains why they want to avoid it and why they don't want to be there. Now, what I would say is that when you're feeling that way, you're feeling that way, about this particular piece is that some children really struggle to be able to articulate the stories that they tell themselves. They can't kind of make that distinction between what's going on in their head and how that relates to the particular situation. So if that is the case, and it's usually with younger children, then really just focus in on what's going on in their body, because that's a much easier thing for them to be able to kind of assess and, and sort of vocalize. And one of the, what's a really lovely way of doing that is if you kind of draw like a, I guess the equivalent of like a gingerbread person on an A4 sheet of paper, you can encourage them to put like X's where they feel it on that body. Sometimes it's much easier to do it that way. Or with, with younger children, sometimes they find it easier if you grab a teddy bear or something that's a cuddly of theirs. It doesn't have to be a bear. It could be an anything. animal or made up creature. But actually instead, when Teddy feels uncomfortable, giraffe is feeling nervous in this situations, where do they, where do they feel it in their body? Sometimes that is much easier for them when they're almost sort of projecting it onto a third party. But when we can look for the, for the stories and what's going on physiologically, it will really help us when we then start coming up with a problem solving, because we want to address the stories that are being told. We want to address the physiology, what's going on in the body. So we're getting super specific about the situations where this happens. We're getting clear on the stories and what the physiology is. We haven't even gone to the ladder yet. We're getting, this is all the groundwork. Now, you know, the problem and your child's current go-to's, you can, that, that now what we want to do is come up with some creative steps to solve the problem. And we're going to do that. And we're stepping stone situations to try. Now at this stage, don't worry too much about how scary or not so scary these stepping stones might be. We'll create some sort of hierarchy later. In other words, the order from not so scary to super scary. But at this stage, it's just thinking through all possible situations. So let's get clear. We've got someone who let's say finds the social situations really difficult. That's where they're lacking confidence because they're worried about judgment. They think everyone's looking at them. They don't know what to say. They fear that if they say something, they're going to look stupid. And so instead that they do that. Okay. So let's say that's one example. Maybe that's what comes out. So we know that judgment is the issue. We know it's that fear. It's almost that kind of rabbit caught in the headlights. So some of the creative solutions that we want to come up with are all going to be around. How can I create situations that are not so scary? How can I create situations where my child practices using their voice, practices, social skills, having conversations where increasing the level of perceived judgment and perceived unfamiliarity, because let's say we've worked out that it's new people, new places. So the new people, new places is going to end up being at the top of our ladder. That's what we're working towards. But then what we're trying to do is we're going to try and come up with some other situations where that will come up. So it may well be, might just be having a conversation on the telephone with a cousin. For example, it might be saying hello to a random person in a supermarket. At this stage, do not worry which is scarier than the other. Just brain dump a whole host of possible tests, you know, little, little, little mini experiments. I find that it works really well to do this with post-it notes. So write down each idea on a post-it note. And what you can then do is you can use that afterwards to sort of put it onto the ladder, but that's what you want to do. So once you've got, once you've brainstormed all the possible situations, we know the issue is around fear of judgment in new situations with new people. And let's say it's about small number of groups, because it's a small number of groups feels more intense. So now what you've got to do is let's come up creatively with as many situations where we vary how scary that situation is. And then you choose, you now need to test the solutions by placing them on your ladder. Yeah. Easiest at the bottom, scariest at the top. Everything in between doesn't have to be perfectly thought through because remember, this is a process and you will only really tweak it. By doing so we have to start, we have to pick one that we're going to start with. And that becomes the bottom of long rung of our ladder. And then we measure and we analyze our results based on how your child gets on. You might need a little adjustment here, a little tweak there, and you only ever work on one rung of the ladder at the time. Tweaking as you go until it's a solid and stable platform. And then you move on to the next rung because that first rung has now become a steady, a new steady habit. And then you're moving on. So that's how we would work through that particular situation. So let's go through the exact same process again, but now looking at it in a different example. Hopefully just listening to the second example, even if neither of them are the specific ones that you're working on, just gives you a really easy way to see how this is going to be implemented and how you might then be able to implement it specifically for your child. There is a another upcoming episode that will address some of the helpful breathing techniques and breathing strategies that are just generally good for children and teens to do to help them be present, which you can then use here, but also your children can use at creating space and just managing stress levels. That's another episode and you can bring that in to this one as well. For this episode, I just wanted to get it really clear just on the behavioral bits that you need to do rather than bringing in the breathing. So that is another one. So you can have a look at, look at that. I think the episode's called being mindful or encouraging our children to be mindful. Okay. So now let's run through, run through real life scenario. Number two, a child or a teen with a lack of motivation, specifically a child or teen who doesn't apply themselves to their schoolwork. That's the situation. So again, we start with getting clear about which school work does this apply to and it could be that it's every single piece of school work it could be every subject but we just need to start first with getting some real clarity about it so it could be subject specific maybe their lack of motivation is in one particular subject or maybe the lack of motivation is one particular type of work that spans across multiple subjects or it could just simply be they just don't engage in school work but i just don't want you to avoid getting into the temptation of mary hann it's just everything i see them every single day they come back from school and they won't do any of their homework okay that might be the case but i would really encourage you to try and home in because what you might find is it is more specific than you think and the reason why it looks like it's everything it's because of the paralysis impacts it's because of the paralysis impacts every single piece of work often you know if we go back to the example around being painfully shy in those social situations there's a narrative that is attached to that school work or the type of school work which will impact it so it'll be around maybe they don't believe that they can that their handwriting is awful their spelling is terrible they can't write essays or maybe they their narrative is around they're not they can't do maths or they're not very good with languages there is something there probably more so than just a broad brush doesn't mean that some of you will be listening to this and it 100 is that your child doesn't matter what the school work is doesn't matter the subject doesn't matter the type of work they're now the kind of they're unmotivated in all areas but i really would ask you and as i said with the first example you just the sweet spot really is in the first couple of steps where you're just really trying to get crystal clear where the issues are so the first step as is the case before is we want to understand when we talk about school work what do we mean subjects type of work look at that and again if you've got a child well you are going to have a child at school because this is school work is liaise with them just say you know we've noticed that jack we have real problems with jack at home when it comes to doing school work and we're just addressing this in a way that is empowering to him and we're just trying to gather as much sort of information and data as we can about it have you got any thoughts before we start helping and supporting him in a specific way because school may well have their own thoughts or as is often the case our children are absolute angels or studious at school and then we see the issues maybe at home but that will tell you something too so that's the first step then we're looking at the patterns of behavior that your child or teen engages in around school work in my experience what you will typically see is avoidance and or procrastination so the frustration that you're having is that they're not doing it they appear unmotivated but the root cause is actually what the root behavior that you're that you're seeing is not necessarily being unmotivated but it's actually being motivated to do something that you're not but you're seeing someone who's trying to avoid or procrastinate so again we go back to trying to help trying to get them to speak to us so that we can understand what are the stories that they are telling themselves about school that subject or that type of school work and what kind of what does that create in their body so in my experience there is procrastination it's not about our what to do but often we basically we procrastinate because of the emotions that we have towards what it is that we're trying to particularly avoid so the narrative the story that your child may well be telling themselves is i'm not good at maths i can't what if i fail i don't know where to start i'm not very good at this whatever there'll be a story that will be very much around lack so actually the root cause is not a child necessarily that is lazy or can't be bothered it's actually a child who's told themselves that they can't even if they come up with the classic and i have actually tried to argue positively in response to this but you know i'm never going to use algebra what's the point of simultaneous equations it sounds it obviously comes from that place of you know what's the point but actually the root is a story that they've told themselves that they can't so again we want to really understand what that story is and it may well be that the story that they're telling themselves is that they can't because there may be some comparison going on with a sibling you know they may have a brother or a sister who they perceive doesn't mean it's true but they perceive is much brighter much more capable and it may be that they are and it may just simply be that that sibling has got more of a growth mindset and just does their work rather than necessarily procrastinate because they maybe there's an inherent part of them that sees that has already got that growth mindset or they've learned over time if they just keep practicing or it may simply be that they have a real strength in that area a real passion a real sort of you know they're particularly capable but that understanding what subjects and what type of work and then getting really clear on the conversation on the narrative on the storytelling will be really crucial so when you're looking at problem solving what you're then looking at when you're trying to create these stepping stones is what scaffolding might we then be able to put in place for my child so if it if it is that your child's got a real story that they're telling about then not being capable maybe that's coupled with a maybe they haven't done particularly well in that particular work then that collaborative conversation with school is around how can we work together to make sure that we're able to work together to make sure that we're able to work together to create manageable stepping stones to build that child or teen's confidence either in that type of work or in that subject or just generally that more engagement in school and that's where i talk a lot about it takes a village but that's where it really matters because that's where you're working together you know i know that children and teens get set homework but if there's a real narrative that is happening around not being capable not being enough and fear then then that work can be adapted could be modified because you're working collectively together as a team as a team with the overall outcome the overall goal being that you're setting up this young person to kind of acquire the skills and the stepping stones in order to be able to do it so you're then having those conversations around what is manageable now part of it might be modifying the work that comes home part of it might actually be that there isn't any work that comes home it may be that they have a little bit of extra you know support with the teacher going through it initially so when they go home they know it may be that the support is about you being with them to help start them off even a 13 14 17 year old it's sometimes it's just having that support and those stepping stones around that narrative it may be that there's a little bit of extra support maybe when you're brainstorming and you're looking at your post-it notes it may be around mantras and affirmations that affirm that they're capable that it's it's about trying their best and that is enough so it's really that's why it's so important that we understand the stories that they tell because that is so crucial to then working out what those stepping stones are so again we do the same we've got multiple post-it notes we're going to put them in the hierarchy we're working out which step is the is the most important step we're going to put them in the hierarchy we're the kind of the least scary or the one that is the most manageable first of all with all of the narrative that is going on start with that again it's recognizing that we're testing the solutions when we place them on the ladder easiest at the bottom scariest at the top everything in between it's not about making it perfect it's a process we're going to keep tweaking we're going to keep trying we're going to keep modifying it but when you're doing that collectively together then your child really sees how that conversation that they have in their head the stories that they tell themselves can then from that we can then make manageable small steps we're not looking at making massive changes we're looking at making small incremental stepping stones to help them get from where they are to where they want to be now i'm hoping that those two examples will probably speak to a huge volume of you anyway because those are two common questions that i get asked but that it will also for those who are grappling with a different set of behaviors that they want to work through that it's a really helpful way of seeing how that framework works it please do kind of write in because if there are other ones that we could do other i could do other episodes that kind of look at other examples that you might be grappling with because that they can be applied to absolutely anything. Now, my give this week is going to be the stepping stones and then I'm going to give the general stepping stones for both that can be applied to either strategy so it's just going to be the general sort of you know five stepping stones that you would go through that you can then apply to either of the situations that I've talked you through and any situation that you are dealing with at home all you have to do to get your free resource is to 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 free resource but all the 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 you
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