Speaker 1Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like. And that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST. That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.
Speaker 2Hello and welcome to The How. Not to scroll. Up Your Kids podcast, the deeper dive episodes designed to unpick a thorny topic so you can take away manageable actions which you can implement, whether that's for you, your family, or for an educational setting. And today is a bit of a corker. I'm your host, Dr. Mary Henn, psychologist and parenting expert. So, pull yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and enjoy the conversation. Before we start today's episode, the nine. expectation changes to supercharge your child's success, I just want to make a short request. If you enjoy this podcast, if you have loved the episodes and have not yet taken the time to rate and review this podcast, I would be so grateful if you could. And let me tell you why. Other parents, other educational setters, other grandparents find this podcast through ratings and reviews. And so by just taking a. moment to give it a score out of five and a short phrase or sentence to say why you find the podcast helpful does a huge amount for helping present the podcast and suggesting it to other parents, grandparents, and educators who may also enjoy. So if you could do that, I would be so grateful. Thank you very much. And now, on to the episode. Now, you may realize that this is the second part that I did a two-part series as such where I looked at nine things that we can do as parents to really supercharge our children's success and supercharge our children's success in the three areas that I think as parents we probably worry about the most. That's how well they do academically, how confident they are, and how well they are. how well their friendships are, that connection that they have with their peers and their contemporaries. Now, the previous episode, which is a standalone episode, was all about how our behavior, what we model to our children, and how we. can tweak and refine that to help supercharge their success in those three areas. So this episode, instead, we're taking a look at how our expectations change and can therefore supercharge our children's success. And both episodes were brought about by articles that I'd read. So the first episode was very much around an Olympian who just blew my mind in the way that she responded to a question from the press that really was. positioned in such a way that undermined her already success. But the expectations one came from a different article. It was an article about a school in London. It's called the London Academy of Excellence. Now, the article sort of. the headline was that it was seen as the, you know, the Eton of state schools. And because it gets the same numbers of pupils as a state school into Oxford and Cambridge. And what was notable about that school was. was the significantly high proportion of students at this school on free school meals. So this school isn't funded by parents. This school is funded by the state. It's a free school. So they're free to sort of go beyond the national curriculum and expand on how they go about approaching it. Now, I will be honest, it is selective. So you can't. not just any pupil can get in. But what really struck me, and I'm not saying that Oxford and Cambridge entrance. is the metrics really of success. I'm not saying that, but it's often societally what we look at as the sort of the pinnacle of a school's ability or a pupil's ability to be successful. But what really struck me from the article was the interviews with the pupils themselves. And the common sort of denominator there was around them being in an environment where suddenly they were able to see themselves. You know, one of the pupils, for example, that they interviewed that was going to Cambridge said he didn't believe that people like him could go to Cambridge. And yet when he was in an environment where the discussion and the expectation was such that they could achieve anything, that that elevated that level of thinking and therefore affected behaviour. And we know, as you know, if you've been listening to the podcast long enough, that I bang on and on and on, that it's the confidence, it's that resilience, it's that feeling that you are capable, that fundamentally underpins everything when it comes to success. And success does not equal getting into one of the elite UK universities, but it is contingent on the environment that you are raised in, where expectations of your capability are high. So I thought, okay, how can we take that and what that particular school has created in terms of the culture there, and what can we do as parents, to then distill some of that into how we approach the expectations that we place on our children for their academic success and how that can affect them and how we look at that in terms of their confidence and also their friendships. So this is about being super practical. And there are some commonalities when we look at the sort of rigorous scientific psychological research about are there some common denominators around success? And it turns out there are. There is this notion of modelled behaviourism, which I've done in a previous episode, and also our expectations. And so our expectations and what we model to our children fundamentally have been shown in the research to be a significant predictor of a child's success. So before I kind of get into the specific things that we can do around expectations, I just wanted to start on this notion of expectations because I think it's helpful to point out that expectations on their own, won't magically create academic success, build confidence, or help our children forge solid friendships. It has to be part of a wider picture. So as we parent our children and how we communicate to them, so if we communicate our unwavering belief in their capability, so that's an expectation, we believe unwaveringly in your capability to do it. When we do that with our words and our actions, do not undermine that verbal statement or belief in any way, then we have these congruent actions between what we say and what we actually do. When there's a mismatch, that's where we've got issues. So when we're talking about expectations, when I start sharing my tips, that's exactly what I mean. But I want to give you an example because hopefully this will really help. So let's say, for example, we've got a child who's doing some homework. Yep, so we might say, I know this maths homework at first look, first glance, looks really difficult, maybe impossible even. And I know that you can make a good first attempt despite feeling that it's just too much, that you can't possibly do it. Because I've seen you do this before. Remember those sort of tricky spellings you had last week and how you stuck with it. And as the week went on, they got easier. Or do you remember that time you were desperate to learn how to ride your new bike? And you kept falling off when we took the stabilizers off, but you found a way to kind of hitch the pedal to the curb and then you were off. I'm happy to sit with you as you work out how to have a go. So you can maybe bounce your ideas off me. I'm no expert, but I'm super happy to sit and learn. So that is, I'm not suggesting that you use that as a script, but what that to me is, it's saying in everything that I say to you, I have unwavering faith in your ability. And what I am saying to you in terms of how I'm supporting you, how I'm acknowledging how challenging it feels in this moment and reminding you of past capabilities, my words and my actions, because I'm happy to sit with you, but I'm not going to do it for you. I'm not saying I'm not going to do it for you. I'm simply saying I'll sit with you as you try and work out what your first steps are going to be. Then to the child, what they're hearing and what they're seeing is 100% what we call congruent. I'm saying, And I'm doing exactly the same thing when we. hold high expectations but then race to fix we race to fix in so oh that looks really difficult let me sit with you and I'll help you with the first question and I'll show you how to do it now there's nothing wrong in helping and supporting our children but it's remembering how our expectations in terms of what we say and then our actions sit similarly because when we race into fix we undermine our spoken word and the message our child or our teen receives is ultimately you can't do this alone you need me to help you so there's the high expectations but we we're congruent we have the high expectations and then we race in but we've also got if we have high expectations and we simply leave our children to work through things without acknowledging the challenge then they drown in their difficulties and their self-belief can hit rock bottom so we want the sweet spot which is high expectations communicated verbally and backed up by our actions which support make sense hopefully that'll be the case now what I would say if you're listening to this episode and you know me I love the power of one and not trying to do too much because that way we're much more consistent so if you have a child who currently has very little sense of capability their confidence is at rock bottom they don't believe that they're capable of anything or you have raced into fix quite a lot and you are now recognizing that but so if they've got absolutely no sense of capability in any of these areas that we're looking at so academics confidence and friendships I would encourage you to focus on doing just one new thing and do this consistently even if it feels as though you are getting absolutely nowhere if they lack confidence in their capability they're not going to get there but it takes time confidence comes from evidence and so when we've got someone who's hit rock bottom who just generally does not believe in their capabilities we have to hit a tipping point where the evidence is sufficient enough for them to then be able to build on that what then happens is if we can build the confidence in an area that they currently lack then this tends to have a sort of a seeping compounding effect into other areas of their capability and so I think it's important to be able to build on that so if we can build on that this tends to have a sort of a seeping compounding effect into other areas but it's you know I always sort of try to pick you know the phrase sort of pick the low hanging fruit so pick the area that you are able to be consistent in yourself as a parent and doesn't feel too tricky so if you've got someone who's you know really struggling in all of the areas and academics is a really big one that they're struggling with my guidance would be to maybe leave the academic bit that little bit as not the one that you work on immediately but maybe pick something in confidence and friendships which may well be easier for your child to experience some evidence of success much more quickly academics very our children very quickly create a bit of a narrative about I'm not very good at I can't do x or y and it often takes time so that would be my advice but of course absolutely do what feels right for you that's the whole point of this is I'm giving you some tips and then you can use those in a way that feels best for your family so what are the three things that we can do in terms of our expectations for academic success the three things we can do for confidence and the three things that we can do for friendship so let's start with the academics and I think first of all it's about setting realistic yet high expectations so it's this setting not baseline not absolutely out of this world but something that is a bit of a stretch goal if we think about it almost as we're always expecting that extra one percent well that's how we're managing those expectations because of course those expectations that we set and those goals that we set are movable you know they hit those goals we move on to the next so we want our children to build on that sense of success so when they are facing academic challenges or at any point we want to be able to communicate our belief in their ability without the communication suggesting that we're expecting perfection so I know you can make progress here I've seen you tackle difficult problems I know that you can do difficult things so that's the sort of language that we're using as well as of course acknowledging that to them in that moment things may well feel difficult and when it comes to academic success where do we show those expectations well we typically are most involved in our children's academic success through the homework that comes home so that would probably be though that area but also maybe in encouraging them to in their reading it may well be also extending the problem-solving aspects that they're expected to do as part of their homework in terms of just daily life you know we can make high expectations of our children's success academically without it always being related to academics we can think about how can I expect my children to be successful and expand some of the other areas in my child's day-to-day where I can set a really high expectation for them to be able to do that whether that's to organize themselves for school whether it's to organize their bedroom and their their things whether it's problem solving in terms of frustrations with their siblings it's multiple it isn't just we can only help our children academically excel in academic areas so the first one is about setting realistic but high expectations the second one you will be really familiar with and this is about expecting effort not results and we can do that through our praise strategy so it's remembering the effort is what we want to praise always rather than the outcome particularly where you have a child that seems to in certain areas of their academics doesn't seem to need to do very much in order to excel it's the process that they go through and they're able to do it in a way that they're able to do it in a way that they're able to go through because that at some point if your child is not experiencing challenges academically they will at some point and if we have only ever praised the outcome and they find themselves in a situation where they can't get that top outcome or that really good result they don't have within them this knowledge and expectation and awareness that actually all my parents really want from me is to try my best because the praise if we've only ever praised results has always been about trying my best because the praise if we've only ever praised that strategy of effort their persistence and the small improvements you know and it can be tiny for your child it may well be for some of you listening a tiny bit of progress really warrants a huge amount of praise and yet for others it may well be that you want your child to show more progress in order to do that but this if we praise our children for those small efforts then that breeds and creates the snowball effect of even more so show me how you tried rather than what mark did you get so we're really tapping into we're using that language around those effort and you know i'm so impressed with the way that you sat down every single night and i know those spellings were really tricky but you really thought about how you could put those into sentences and i know it was really frustrating sometimes and i'm so proud of you for that you know tell me how you tried in your spelling test not i know you tried really hard with your spellings and i'm so delighted with how you did that how did you get on so we're just shifting that again it's this idea of congruence what we say and what we do when it feels to our child is exactly the same then the message really gets amplified that my parents really only do care about my effort they don't care about what i get and then of course what we know is effort leads to outcome over time so the second one is about expecting effort not appraising process and the third one is also about expecting balance
Speaker 1therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough it shows up in the smallest moments you bite your tongue instead of escalating you put your phone down instead of firing off that text you say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most nobody applauds those moments but they quietly change your life that's what growing feels like and that's exactly what grow therapy is here for grow is therapy that works covered by insurance sessions average 21 with insurance and some pay as little as zero dollars depending on their plan there are no subscriptions no long-term commitments you just pay per session grow connects you with thousands of high quality licensed therapists across the u.s offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends you can search by what matters like insurance facility identity or availability and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days not the national 48 day average see if you could pay as little as zero dollars for therapy in seconds at grow therapy.com slash a cast that's grow therapy.com slash a cast grow therapy.com slash a cast availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan
Speaker 3Check Engine, ABS, or Maintenance. light on take the guesswork out of your warning lights with o'reilly veriscan the service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ase certified master technicians and if you need help we could recommend a shop for you ask for o'reilly veriscan today auto parts we want to be able to
Speaker 2communicate through what we say and what we do that we we want to normalize there being a balance between working on their academics resting enjoying hobbies taking breaks that it is that the whole person you know there's a school that has this sort of ethos educating the whole person and it's it's really thinking about it is about balance it is about being rational and it is about being able to communicate through what we say and what we do that we want to normalize there being a balance between working on their academics resting enjoying hobbies taking because the hobbies and the interests that our children have teach them as much as their academics in terms of resilience and problem solving and effort and bouncing back from adversity and conflict resolution and communication we don't want to be in a situation where we're constantly saying why are you lying around you never do anything because it's this idea of balance so high expectations work best also when our children are not burnt out when we're not constant the expecting more and more and so those would be my top three in terms of how our communication of expectations can then help our children how about expectations for confidence now this can be well it can feel like a tricky one but remember confidence is built through exposure they have to be in it in order to build it so the first one in terms of our expectations is that we expect our children to be in a position where they can be in a position where they can be in a position where they can be in a position where they can be in a position where they can be in a position where everything that we do you don't have to be good at it you just have to give things a go and that can be physically trying something new in terms of you know them engaging in something or it could be trying something new in terms of foods and experiences so we want to do that so we want to convey that attempting having a go matters more than succeeding we're in this to have you know how many new experiences how many new things can we do and we're in this to have you know how many we try how many new things did you try this week i tried as your parent this many new things this is what i tried and this is what i tried and they don't have to be huge this isn't about right you're doing judo today and then you're going to try the violin next week and then you're going to try and running and then you're going to try football it's just simply trying new things maybe saying hello to somebody while you're waiting at the bus stop that might be a new thing for your child because they don't do that it may be attempting to do up their laces because they're learning to do laces rather than using velcro it's just this culture that we create through our expectations that we try something new and it may well be that you pick up the notion that your children set expectations for you about things that they do without thinking that you have to try you know whether that's specific interests that they have games that they play whatever that might be that we also maybe you've got a child who likes roller skating or skateboarding or likes to jump on a trampoline and do somersaults or they do some gymnastics in the house we want to be setting that as a norm in our family we are a family that try new things we're a family that that do that then we have to be open to being part of that so it's not this sort of you know say what i do what i say rather than what i do so we get that double whammy of i'm modeling it to you i'm embedding it in the culture within our home and so you get this really great impact as a result of it so say that attempting matters more than succeeding give it a go i'm proud of you for trying so using that kind of language so that's the first thing expect them to try new things the second is expect mistakes as part of learning and i think sometimes we can be frustrated maybe and i don't think it's that we expect our children to be perfect at anything as soon as they start but i think sometimes we get frustrated because we feel that they've not really tried if we try and manage our so what i'm really looking from jack to do is just to have a go and all i'm going to focus on is that they've had an attempt have they attempted it in the way has jack attempted it in the way that i would really like him to with enthusiasm and gusto no but he's tried he's had a go and i'm going to praise that because what i'm communicating is i'm not frustrated that you didn't you weren't successful i am pleased that you gave it a go when we get critical in terms of well you didn't really try did you what that communicates to our children is actually what i've done is not good enough and because we're trying to say that effort is what matters that's what we should be praising we can question how you know what was the process that you went through this time compared to what you did last time we could try and unpick and help them unpick the difference between the effort each time but we really want to just keep that focus on the you know we're expecting mistakes as part of learning so treat errors as normal abnormal and failures you know what did you learn from that instead of why do you think that happened so it's this constant and we know that these are the sorts of things that we should be doing for ourselves but we don't so if we can you know if that one is a really tricky one for you and i find that one particularly tricky not because i find it tricky for my children but because i find it tricky for myself i'm not very kind and compassionate to myself i do reflect on what i've learned when things don't go to plan and i'm not very kind and compassionate to myself i do reflect on what but it's framed in my mind as a failure and oh my goodness me why can't i get these things right rather than okay right i tried that that didn't quite work the way i thought it was going to do i've learned what have i learned so when i approach it next time and we've all heard of all of the famous quotes michael jordan talking about how many times he failed to get the basketball in it is just thinking about how we position it with ourselves because if that really is a big one for then if we can start working on it in terms of the narrative that we have with ourselves it should then make it easier for our children but it really is that expecting mistakes and framing trying something new as i'm not expecting you to be brilliant at this at all i'm expecting you to take a really long time to learn and and to be able to do it and i'm just absolutely delighted that you gave it a go well done so that's number two number three and this one is i don't know maybe it isn't something you would have necessarily thought of but expect there to be some form of emotional expression when we're building confidence when we're encouraging our children to try new things when we're expecting them to see failure and mistakes as part of learning we have we have to also expect them to express their emotions through that process and those emotions are likely to be difficult emotions not just for our child to go through but for us to navigate as they experience them and i think in lots of ways when it comes to those sort of difficult emotions is when we expect it when we position it that way for ourselves we're much better able to manage it so really you know allowing our children to go through those feelings without making a judgment it's okay to feel nervous everyone does sometimes it's okay to feel angry and frustrated that you weren't able to do it first time but learning a new skill requires multiple attempts things won't go right the very first time so we really acknowledge that and then that itself helps build those confidence muscles that come through exposure so those are the three for our confidence i hope you are finding these super super helpful of course you know there is a lot of information in this episode so you may find that you have to stop and rewind or maybe listen to the whole episode through once and then go back as you sort of identify which are the areas that you're most comfortable with and then you can start to think about which are the areas you might want to work on first for your each of your children which will be different so now let's do the expectations we have in terms of helping our children build those robust and solid friendships so the first one and i think that this is one that we can really develop remember our children learn about relationships through the relationships we have at home and so the first thing is about our expectations that relationships with others are contingent on kindness and respect so we we set the standards for that at home in terms of the way our children communicate to us the way our children communicate with their siblings if they have siblings and the way that we communicate as adults with our co-parents but also the people we interact with on a day-to-day basis so yes we're talking about setting an expectation of kindness and respect but we're also saying that that is part of this whole modeling are we saying that this is the standard this is the culture within our home and that you know this is a really important value that we have but are we also demonstrating that not only in what we're verbally saying to our children of our expectations but also how our actions because those actions speak volumes so in this family we speak kindly to each other even when we're upset in this family when someone has done something to us we communicate clearly and kindly why that's upset you so it's this really setting that as a i guess yeah as a cultural standard within our home it's it's it's such it's a value that underpins every aspect of how you speak to each other and I do think we know when we're all familiar with this notion of repair you know when we've lost it and we've shouted at our children or we've been or we have been disrespectful or unkind part of that repair process is that acknowledgement that we didn't make the best choice in that moment but we can always bring it back to you know in this family we speak kindly to each other and I didn't do that and this is hence why I'm making this repair this is why I'm apologizing and what I'm going to do differently next time so we really embed that because if we have that at home then our children are more likely to then be able to do that within their friendships as well so that's number one is expecting kindness and respect the second one is about expecting boundaries a good friendship a solid robust friendship you know its foundations are kindness and respect but it's also has boundaries so we want to encourage our children to be able to say no to be able to walk away from drama to choose friends who treat them well and so those healthy expectations include that self-respect and knowing their value knowing their worth and knowing the difference between a quality friendship one that is contingent on kindness and respect and has its moments at times but that they are able to exercise that self-respect of actually I value myself and I value my boundaries and this is not acceptable in this moment so I'm going to walk away from that drama I'm not going to be sucked in to unkindness about other people or leaving people out or leaving me out so it's that it's that whole aspect because that is important in terms of their self-esteem and their self-respect and it commands respect from others from their contemporaries when individuals are able to really exercise that and I know it can be really difficult because friendships are such a big part for our children of what makes the school experience something that they get up and go to every single day but in the long term the quality of the friendships that they forge is significant significantly higher when they are able to exercise those boundaries and so again practicing those boundaries of walking away from drama our children can also do in the comfort of their own home as well as us demonstrating and modeling to them how we walk away from drama how we don't speak unkindly about our friendships or other people when we are not with them as such that we communicate and manage conflict in a kind and compassionate and respectful way so that's a big part of that so that's number two and then number three is expect effort in maintaining friendships so we have an expectation that our children cultivate nurture cherish these friendships by making an effort they call they message they apologize they invite relationships take practice friends need looking after just like plants and I know that this will resonate for some because I often get comments that come it through certainly when I'm giving parent talks about children who seem to have really good friendships at school and then when it's a school holiday they just seem to do absolutely nothing about it they don't make contact they don't engage they don't do anything so the first thing I would say if you if that is the situation is first of all just do a bit of a self-reflection how am I modeling to my child how I maintain my friends and my family and my family and my family and my family and my friendships so that we can just rule out that it isn't oh gosh actually my child doesn't see me do it so I can be I can be nagging them but they really don't see me doing it if you reflect and you think actually I really friendships are really important to me Mary Hannah I'm always doing things with my friends and nurturing and checking in then I would go back to the confidence piece because quite often the reason why children don't make that contact within and don't nurture them at least to a minimum level can sometimes be that they don't feel confident or secure within that friendship group in order to be the initiator so you may well find that they're great when they get contacted but they're not good at doing the initiation piece so it's really just checking in on that as well as also being mindful that you may well have a child who's naturally quite introverted and if it's a one-week school break they're delighted that they don't have to use up loads of energy being happy and joyful with other people and they just welcome being at home and just chilling out and not doing that so just examine the whole picture because there will be something that will be underlying it rather than just simply being that they can't be bothered so that's just a crucial bit to kind of be aware of so I hope that I mean I feel like I've hopefully done a really thorough job here in terms of expectations and hopefully you can see that there is something relatively straightforward about this and I hope that you can see that there is something relatively straightforward that you can be doing that you can shift and change for your family that may make a really big impact and I think the thing to remember is this congruence are is what I'm saying as a parent met by my actions and if it is not which bit do I need to change because if I can get that congruent and then I can be consistent that's where the magic happens so I hope you found that episode helpful and of course if you've enjoyed this episode if you have and you know someone who may well also benefit from this episode then why not think about sharing this this episode or the podcast itself so that others can find us and we can spread the love so until next time
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