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Speaker 2Hello 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 15, and today we're talking about the secrets to school success. And it has nothing to do with academics. Now, I want us to start, to set the scene, is I want us to keep in perspective what the final outcome we're looking for is. And this is the notion that as parents, our role is not to raise the most academically capable children. Our role, actually, as parents, is to raise children who become confident, resilient adults, equipped to live life fully and successfully, whatever success looks like for them, not us. And I want you to keep that in mind, front and centre, all the way through this podcast, but also all the way through in the actions and the choices that we make in each and every moment. Because that is so important when we go about making the choices that we do as parents in those moment to moment. Because ultimately, parenting isn't lots of reflective time. We have to parent in those moments. And I want you to remember my building analogy. If you've not listened to that, go back to one of some of the earlier episodes where I've talked specifically about this analogy. And I've talked specifically about this analogy. And I bring it in a lot. So the idea here is that our children are a building under construction. And that we, as parents, our role isn't to help decide what that building looks like. Our role is to provide the scaffolding. We provide the safety net on which any falling masonry may fall and be caught so that that building can still rise strong. As the scaffolding, we simply respond. We respond to the needs, the shape, the design of the building which our children choose. We do not get to choose the internal layout, the structure, the architectural design, the number of floors and levels that our children's building has. We don't get to inhabit that building. Our children do. When we become interfering in our children's academic success, that's where we try. And influence the build. And you can't ultimately change what's architecturally designed to be something else. So we have to remember that our role with the scaffolding is that we adapt and we modify as our children's build changes, staying close enough to protect any falling masonry, but allowing space for our children to grow and expand and become ultimately the phenomenal building that will be unique to them, that they get to live in and we get to love. So that's the idea. And I know how hard it is because we're very much parenting in the moment rather than literally thinking more long-term. And I call the difference between these things quick wins as opposed to long-term success. Now, sometimes we need to have quick wins because it helps us move a situation on. But ultimately, we should be focusing on this long-term success. After all, schools feel very much like it's all about measurements against milestones, against goals, targets, and where comparison is rife. Quick wins see us getting our children's things ready for school for them, sitting next to them, coaxing and cajoling as they do their homework, maybe even giving them the answers. These quick wins don't instruct. They just help us help them in that moment. Long-term success is all about investment. Investing our time, feeling the pain of the stagnation, hours of time invested. And yet ultimately, long-term, when we're looking at long-term success and when we keep long-term success in our mind, we teach our children the skills they need to be independent, to be able to live more fully and independently in this life that is happy and successful, whatever that success looks like for them. It's about us. So we must keep that in our minds. And I know sometimes we do have to go for those quick wins because maybe that tantrum about doing that homework is meaning that the family is very fragmented and you've got two other children that you need to deal with in that moment. And for that moment, you need to sit next to them. But we must be keeping our mind constantly focused on what am I doing? What am I teaching? How am I helping my child move towards long-term success rather than always relying? On those quick wins. And we're going to look at those at my three top secrets shortly. You see, school can trigger so much in us. Maybe we wish we'd worked harder and got better results. I know that I did. So we vow to help our children as much as possible. Maybe we hated school and we don't want the same for our children. Whatever it is, we have to detach our experience from that of our children's. It invalidates theirs and means, that what happens when we approach it from that guilt from our own childhood or the need to correct the difficulties of our own childhood is that we approach our parenting from a place of lack rather than their individuality. I know parenting can feel very judgmental. Maybe if your child has had a tantrum and they won't do their homework, you worry that the teacher will think you're not a good parent. Or if your child struggles with their spellings, you don't want them in the bottom set. Please stop worrying about anyone else. Think only of what is in the best interests of your child. And I say this very much as a mother who now has both my children at university and they're adults who are incredibly articulate about their childhood experiences. And I can tell you with all honesty, your children will thank you later for allowing them to learn and to fail. However painful it feels for you at that time. What's key to remember, and that's part of the key role of us in terms of our scaffolding, is to be there to support our children emotionally. And if we focus on that, then we will never fail them. When we look at job prospects and job opportunities, there are very few jobs and careers which require 100% dedication on academic excellence. Most jobs, most careers involve people. Understanding emotions, understanding how we can be the best people that we can be in situations that require us working alongside other human beings. So when we focus on being emotionally available and we focus on the long-term wins and the long-term successes that will see our children flourish day to day, the more likely we are to see our children flourish at school and kind of achieve their excellence, whatever excellence looks like for them. So in this podcast, I'm going to share with you my three top secrets. And I guess they're secrets because I think they're probably things that we don't always necessarily focus in on because in those moment to moment, we're caught up in that we need to do the reading, we need to do the spellings, they need an exam to revise for, all of those things. So here are my top three. The first is work with the end in mind. So this is very much about what we've talked already. If it means it's a mantra that you put up somewhere that reminds you what your role is as parents. In this moment, I can choose a quick win, which might appease the situation and it might be appropriate. But what am I doing for the long-term success? How am I helping my child? How am I equipping them and preparing them for life beyond home? Because ultimately, that's what our children are going to do. They're going to leave home. They're going to become independently living adults making their own choices. And our role is to make sure that the foundations upon which they're building rises is a solid foundation that equips them with the day-to-day skills that they need. So one of the things that's important about keeping us checked in with the long-term success rather than quick wins is by taking time each week to reflect. Now I've talked about Sunday family meetings before so please go back to the resource if you've already signed into my free library and have a look at that and start kind of putting that into place but Sunday family meetings are a great way to force you, and I say this with love, but force you to reflect on your own parenting before you then have the meeting with the children because it asks you this week what have I done in those moments of challenge and difficulty that is beginning to equip my child. Now sometimes, don't get me wrong, sometimes we have to go, for quick wins, sometimes that is the only way to move forward, but if you are finding and you're reflecting honestly at the end of each week and finding that each and every day you're going for quick wins, you're not serving your children long term and you're certainly not serving yourself. I will be honest, it takes a huge amount of investment in time and probably time that you feel that you do not have, but every single time you get your children's school books, and school bags together for school rather than them, you add up that time, you are always going to lose that time, whereas if you invest the time in explaining to your children why it's important that they get their books together, that they get their book bag or rucksack or whatever it is that they have in terms of all of their school things together, if we help and invest the time, yes it takes a long time to teach them, yes we're constantly having to monitor and reassure and dependent with their homework, but that investment gives them the skills of independence that allows them to ultimately manage it themselves and takes that completely away from us. So this is the difference between quick wins and this long-term success because long-term success teaches skills. So by having these regular Sunday family meetings, the idea is that you would catch up, if you're a single parent, catch up with yourself. How have you shown up as a parent this week? Where have you had quick wins that have been necessary? Where have you invested the time for this long-term success? If you're in a partnership where you're living together, you do that. If you're co-parenting but you're no longer together and your relationship is amicable, then again it's about reflecting regularly so that you can kind of move and help your children move forward. And if you are co-parenting but not cohabiting, then it's also about understanding that you can both teach long-term success and have quick wins rather than feeling that one needs to dictate to the other. Our children get the experiences from lots of different places, so it doesn't have to be precisely the same, but it's about moving together forward, particularly where you've got a relationship where you can have that kind of conversation. But it's about regular reflecting. So my first top secret tip is always work with the end in mind. And if you need a reminder, listen to this podcast. Every time you need to. Or have a note, a mantra, a card up that reminds you that we're working towards long-term success and focusing on those skills in the end. So that's top tip number one. Top tip number two is about growth mindset. Now you've probably heard growth mindset from me quite a lot. It's probably also come up at your children's school. But when I'm talking about growth mindset, I'm talking about the fact that that includes you as well as your children. So let's recap on what this idea of growth mindset is. It's work by Carol Dweck. And it's this notion that we can sort of have this fixed mindset or growth mindset. We want to encourage growth mindset. Fixed mindset is all about talents and abilities being very much innate, very black and white, very dichotomous. I'm good at maths or I'm not. I'm good at spellings. I'm not. I'm sporty. I'm not. I'm beautiful. I'm not. It takes this view very much that you are either one or the other. And that as individuals, we can't really do a huge amount to change that. Growth mindset takes this approach that actually I can do anything I want to if I put enough effort. A fixed mindset focuses very much on outcome. Growth mindset focuses very much on process. Now, the reason why I'm saying that it includes you is also that we need to demonstrate this and our children seeing that we're trying to learn and acquire new skills and taking on new teaching and new learning. But we also need to take that on board in terms of our parenting. It's not that we're either good at parenting or not, that we've made a good choice in that parenting moment or we haven't. We have to understand that parenting is a process. It requires effort. It requires time. It requires investment. It requires reflection and changing and tweaking and practice. So let's not forget that. So often I see this exasperation amongst parents that I've tried everything. I've read every book. I've done everything I could possibly do. And I still can't change this particular outcome with my child. But we have to understand much in the same way as, you know, you might want to take on a skill riding a bicycle or learning to play tennis or chess or whatever that might be or running a marathon.
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Speaker 2You have peaks, troughs, we have great big plunging down where things don't work, and then these great highs of success and these real lows of failure. That's exactly the same with parenting. It is. It isn't meant to be smooth sailing. It's meant to be hard because we can't preempt what's showing up for our children. We can't preempt how they experience their world around them. So we don't know. We're working with a very, pretty much on very shaky ground, constantly changing, moving, and we're trying to respond to that in each and every moment. So we need to make sure that we're adopting a growth mindset, that we're focusing in on the process, that we're doing the right things. We might not see a result for the changes that we put in place, maybe in terms of trying to encourage our children to do their homework on their own or get their book bags ready or go to bed when they're asked to. And it's not then about just throwing our arms up and just exclaiming, well, goodness me, I'm never going to get this right. We have to understand that we need to keep going. And that's important because if we are living and breathing the growth mindset, then it's so much easier to support and encourage our children to. If we're constantly berating ourselves because we've either been successful or not, which is fixed mindset, how can we encourage our children to focus on practice and effort and process and have the faith to know that eventually the outcome will come? So we need to think about it from a parenting perspective. And then now let's look about what this means in terms of our children's school success. Well, it's all about helping them understand, and acting and practicing on this perspective that actually everything takes effort. Nothing comes to us immediately. This innate talent is a myth. When we see these 18-year-olds who have just won the US Tennis Open, and we herald her success and her phenomenal drive and determination, that she wasn't born a tennis pro. She became a tennis pro because she showed an probably at some point when she was quite young, and then she put in the app. hours we have to take away we have to stop looking at talent being innate we have to understand that it's all about you know for those of you who may well have read the book that talks about the 20,000 hours rule it's this notion that when we put in the time and we put in the effort eventually we can do anything so when our children are very much focused on the difficulties they're having doing their spellings or maybe they can't read or maybe they're finding their number bonds difficult with maths whatever it is that they might do promoting and encouraging growth mindset as a parent comes for me two simple things that we can do two simple and easy things that we can do the first is we must praise process and not outcome when our children do really well if they have made very little effort why do we want to praise the outcome if we've got a lot of work to do we want to praise the outcome we want to praise the outcome we want to praise the outcome if we've got a child who has spellings and they've got 10 out of 10 and let's face it we've had tears tantrums screaming shouting forcing them to get their spellings done with very little effort on their part and they get 10 out of 10 we don't reward that we don't say oh my goodness me well done you got 10 out of 10 because actually what we have just affirmed to our children is that it doesn't matter all of the tantrums and all of the you know unlike likelihood of them actually trying to learn their spellings but actually in that moment those spellings for that particular week didn't challenge them what we're trying to ultimately teach which goes back with working with the end in mind when we're doing things like helping our children with their spellings the process of spellings is all about helping our children to be able to deconstruct words to be able to understand the relationship of certain letters and sounds that come together to help them make the best guess they can when they're writing longer essays as they get older as to what might be the correct spelling so when we focus on outcome and great you got 10 out of 10 12 out of 12 15 out of 15 we've taught them nothing that's given a quick win but has not given them that long-term success of actually how can i when i'm presented with a word at some point as i get older that i have absolutely no idea how to spell what skills have i been taught to be able to make a best guess with that spelling so we must focus on praising process so if your child has worked their little socks off they're going to off trying so hard with their spellings and they've got two out of ten praise their effort i am so proud of the work that you put into your spellings it might feel like you've not done very well because you've got a two out of ten but i know that all of that time that you spent on those spellings will definitely show up as your as you continue to learn more and more words that's what we want to praise we want to praise our children for their independence we want to praise them for starting their homework even if they can't do it themselves it's process and it's this idea that when we praise them use the catchphrase analogy of say what you see describe the behavior that your child is exhibiting in that moment which you want to see more of i'm so proud that you went and you got your book and you sat down straight away to start your homework i know you didn't know what to do straight away and you needed to ask me a few questions but the fact that you started showed how independent you're becoming and how you can see that you're able to do things yourself praise process and what happens is you get more of that behavior because you've been so clear with your children what it is you like so when we're cultivating growth mindset the first thing we need to do is praise process and not outcome the second easy win that you can do regularly and my children will probably say that they've been hard for life by me saying it all of the time to them is simply adding the word yet when your children or you end up with these fixed mindset statements oh i can't do my spellings they're so hard yet oh this computer is driving me mad it keeps crashing and i can't do my work yet when we add the word yet we create potential and opportunity when we make statements like i can't run i can't fly an airplane i can't do algebra i'm not sporty we make absolute dichotomous black and white statements about our ability we can either do this or we can't when we add the word yet we create possibility i can't fly an airplane yet i certainly wouldn't ever choose to want to learn but the only reason why i can't fly one is because i can't fly an airplane i can't fly an airplane i can't fly an airplane because i've not tried and this is what we want to encourage with our children is this notion that things don't come to us easily we have to put practice in and refer them back to the time that they learned to walk which they obviously won't remember but learn to swim learn to ride a bicycle whatever it is that your child does it would have started with them not being able to do it but they would have picked themselves up and they would have tried again so the two quick wins that you can have is this notion of praising process not outcome and focusing very much on adding this extra word yet so the two secrets that i've shared with you so far are work with the end in mind remember you're looking for long-term success and trying to reduce those quick wins the second is this idea about growth mindset not only for our children but also for us so we can add that word yet when we're feeling exasperated and to bed without the drama of in and out constantly that's just yet at some point your children will go to sleep in their bedrooms and will not come out and you will have an evening to yourself you're just not there yet and that's the difference in terms of growth mindset and the final top secret is this notion of cultivating a culture of goal setting in your family you'll see that i've written a blog post a little while ago about the secrets to success within a family and i sort of use this analogy that a family is very much like an organization and that we have teams within there and it's about the culture within that organization is set by you as the parent that's how you set that culture as part of the foundations that we lay on which our scaffolding and our children's building rises if we cultivate a culture of goal setting as part of these sunday family meetings these regular catch-ups i mean these goal settings can be small or they can be large maybe you've got a child who themselves wants to be able to run 5k wants to do a park run maybe they want to do a certain cycle maybe they want to be more confident about forming friendships maybe they want to be able to do their homework more independently maybe they want to catch the bus on their own or be able to walk to school on their own whatever that might be it's really trying to cultivate a culture within your family of regularly talking about what are we working on this week what are you working on what am i working on what's your father working on or your mother working on or your sister or your brother it's really cultivating this idea that because it sits so hand in hand with this notion of growth mindset is what are we what are we working on we're constantly a work in progress we're striving to be the best version of ourselves and so part of that is always going to be looking at what we might want to do and it might be to broaden our food repertoire so maybe we're going to be looking the goal for the week is to try one new thing anything like that is really just trying to encourage that and to be talking about it regularly as adults what are we working towards and it may well be we have a long goal maybe we've decided that we're going to retrain in some way or take on a particular sport so we can then break down that bigger goal into smaller goals so that we can reflect and talk about that as part of our family meeting because what's so important about goal setting it's very much encouraging this growth mindset but it's the person that we become in the process of pursuing our goals which is so key to helping our children in their long-term success equipping them to become confident resilient adults who are equipped to live life happily and successfully whatever success looks like for them and not us we're shifting that emphasis from our children becoming reliant so we're going to be working on that solely reliant on us to provide and to problem solve and to help and support and helping them with the skills that they need in order to be able to do it and when we cultivate this culture of goal setting we also cultivate a culture of problem solving of analyzing of reflection looking at what they've done so far how well has that worked what might i need to tweak change refine in order to then move me that little bit closer the following week to where i want to go so my three top secrets to school success are work with the end in mind so remembering that we're going and we're focusing on these long-term success rather than always quick wins reflecting regularly each week as a parent have i shown up have i jumped in too quickly too often to get that quick win rather than provided an opportunity for my child to learn what might i do next week in order to help facilitate and create more of those opportunities. The second secret is about growth mindset, not just for our children, but for ourselves. Understanding that parenting is a process. We may put new strategies in place and we might not see success in those strategies in a week, two weeks, three months. We may not see success for five years. As a parent to a 21 and an 18 year old, I can tell you now there are some strategies I put in place when my children were younger that my eldest at 21 is now saying, I'm so grateful that you did that. So we have to trust the process and understand that's part of growth mindset. We may not see success now, but we will keep putting the time, the effort and the investment because we're working with the end in mind and then encouraging our children to do the same by being focused on praising process, not outcome, and beginning to encourage our children to do the same by being focused on praising process, not outcome, and beginning to instill that mindset around the yet. I may not be able to do this yet. There's time. And then the third secret is about cultivating a culture of goal setting within your family. So not just your children setting goals, but you setting goals, whether they're big ones that might take six months, 12 months, two years to accomplish, or whether they're small ones. It's regularly reflecting, regularly talking about goal setting, not only for your children, but also for you as adults. So I think it's important to do that. And I think it's important to do that. And I think adults. So my give this week is a resource for goal setting. So head over to my free resource library, drmaryhand.com forward slash library, where you'll find a link to download the goal setting template. All you need to do is pop in your email address and you can get instant access, not only to this week's resource, but all the other free resources across all my podcast episodes. As ever, if you have enjoyed this episode, I would love it. Really love it. If you could follow and review the podcast, it's the way that others can find us and we can spread the love. So until next time.
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