Balancing Homework And Friends After School

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School and social activities are high priorities for young people, but balancing the two can sometimes be challenging. If you think this occasionally applies to you, here’s some advice on how to solve the dilemma.

1. Do It Together

People differ when it comes to the surroundings that make them feel relaxed and comfortable. Some prefer spending a quiet night in with a book or a movie, while others usually need external stimulation to feel good; they enjoy loud places, meeting lots of people, and being the center of attention. However, most of us fall somewhere in between the two extremes, sometimes preferring peace and quiet, sometimes bright lights and lively company.

But how does this relate to helping you with your homework? Well, depending on which end of the continuum you’re closest to, the solution to your problem with the homework-friends balance might be different.

If you generally prefer small groups, you might find it hard to choose between picking up a school book or calling a friend over or perhaps messaging them all day. Having one eye on your work and the other on your phone tends to be very distracting. So, do you perform your academic tasks or decide to have a fun time with your friends? Actually, there’s no need to always choose between the two. You can ask your friends to come to a study group with you. Just choose a quiet place, decide on a goal together (forty-five minutes of studying, fifteen minutes of free time, for example) and follow it. It helps to work together – you’re motivating as well as keeping an eye on each other. And after the homework’s done, you can continue to hang out.

Now, what about those who prefer to be among lots of people? Pretty much the same thing applies, except the surroundings are different. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone needs to be closeted away in a quiet room to make the most of their homework time. If you find it hard to concentrate this way, you might benefit from a different approach. Invite your friends to join you at a neighborhood coffee shop, or go to a popular park with a blanket and your books and get ready to work! You’ll be with your friends, and surrounded by the chatter and stimulation that simply doing your homework in your room doesn’t give you.[2] You’ll feel comfortable and much more able to focus on your work.

However, for most people, the ideal work environment depends largely on their current mood. If this describes you, you might sometimes prefer quiet surroundings, sometimes lively ones. You know yourself best, so find out what works best for you at any given time. Be honest with yourself, though. It’s important to do the work as well as socialize, so if you notice you’re frequently distracted while with your friends, you might want to try the other approach.

2. Do It As Soon As Possible

Whether you decide to do your homework with friends or alone, tackling it as soon as possible after you’ve dealt with the material in class can lower the time you’ll need to retain the content successfully. When new information is still fresh in your mind, it’s easier to recall the small details and hints your teacher gave you as well as the overall material. [3] So, doing your homework first is a smart move. It means you’ll finish it more quickly and have more time for your friends later on. That in itself should be motivation enough.

And here’s something else that may help. It’s been shown that studying, as well as homework, is best done in parts. [4] That means that though you should ideally start doing your homework as soon as possible, if you feel your eyelids getting heavy and your yawns getting the best of you, it’s probably time to hit the pause button. You can use this time to clear your head.  Listen to some music, make some coffee, exercise, or squeeze in a little quality time with your friends. The choice is up to you. However, the time you spend on your break should depend on the amount of time you’ve spent doing homework. If you only began half an hour ago, a break of ten minutes will do just fine. On the other hand, if you’ve been dealing with it for two hours straight, an hour off won’t be too much. This break helps you in two ways. Your brain will return to the task refreshed, yet still able to remember what you’ve been working on, and as a matter of fact, tasks you don’t finish from the get-go tend to be remembered more clearly than those you do! [5]  So, having a break is nothing to fear, as long as it doesn’t turn into a vacation.

Now that you know these little tricks, there’s nothing stopping you from leading a fulfilling academic AND social life. So, enough procrastination and off you go!

by Jelena Jegdić

References:

  1. Jung, C.G. (1987), C.G. Jung Speaking
  2. Geen, R. G. (1984). Preferred stimulation levels in introverts and extroverts: Effects on arousal and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46(6), 1303-1312.
  3. Edwards, C.D. (1999), How to Handle a Hard-to-Handle Kid: A Parents’ Guide to Understanding and Changing Problem Behaviors
  4. Mace, C.A. (1963), Psychology of study
  5. Zeigarnik, B. (1967). On finished and unfinished tasks. In W. D. Ellis (Ed.), A sourcebook of Gestalt psychology

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Getting into Flow

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The concept of flow

What makes us happy? What does it mean to have a meaningful life? Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi thinks that the answer to these fundamental questions has a lot to do with a specific kind of experience that he named “flow”. He defines flow as a psychical state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it. Flow is a universal phenomenon that can be achieved while performing many activities ranging from cooking and performing surgery to dancing and rock climbing. However, some flow activities are more likely to provoke a flow state. These activities have rules, they require skill learning, they make it possible to set goals, and they provide feedback.

What are the positive effects of flow? Many studies have shown that experiencing flow is in positive relation with psychological and subjective well-being, increased concentration, self-esteem, creativity, and performance. Adolescents who regularly experience flow are friendlier, happier, and more sociable.

In the first part of this article you will learn more about the concept of flow and its characteristics, while at the end you can find some practical tips for nurturing flow in your own family.

How to recognize flow?

In his TED talk, Csikszentmihalyi specified different aspects of flow. We can use some of these aspects to determine if we succeeded in entering flow or as guidelines that can help us enter this state.

Firstly, someone experiencing the state of flow feels completely involved in the activity they’re doing. The human cognitive system has a limited capacity for information processing and during flow this capacity is used for only one activity. Our attention is focused. At the same time, this means there is no more capacity left to process any other information, which leads to merging of action and awareness – you stop being aware of yourself as separate from your actions, your attention is completely absorbed by the activity.  However, in everyday life, we are often bombarded with various stimuli and our attention is dispersed. Therefore, attention plays a major role in entering and staying in flow. This has some practical implications. In order to facilitate entering flow you should get rid of potential distractors (for example, turn off your smartphone while studying)

Secondly, it is important that we know what needs to be done and how well we’re doing it. This means that in order to achieve flow, we should set specific goals and pay attention to the feedback. The nature of this feedback differs from situation to situation, but its main role is the symbolic message it carries – I have succeeded. However, sometimes we cannot set clear goals (for example, in some artistic activities). In this case, we must develop some sort of personal sense of what we want to accomplish.

Thirdly, the experience of flow is intrinsically rewarding. Contrary to extrinsic motivation, where someone performs an activity in order to attain a desired outcome (money, reputation…), intrinsically motivated people perform an activity for its own sake. The state of flow itself is recognized as a reward, or as Csikszentmihalyi would say, an action becomes autotelic (auto – self, telos – goal).

The fourth aspect of flow has to do with our skills. In order to achieve flow, we must perceive an activity as doable. In other words, we must evaluate our skill level as high enough to successfully perform an activity. The relationship between skills and challenges has a key role in entering flow and is described in the following section.

Finally, we experience temporal distortion. A person in flow usually has a feeling that time passes much faster compared to time spent doing mundane, boring activities.

Models of flow – relationship between skill and challenge

Csikszentmihalyi “mapped” flow experience using a simple schema that includes measures of skill and challenge.

models of flow

 

In his early work, Csikszentmihalyi thought that in order to enter flow it was necessary to find a balance between your skills and challenges (as represented in the first model). If the equilibrium was broken, you would experience either anxiety (when challenges are overwhelming) or boredom (when challenges are too easy).  However, many studies have shown that balance alone is not enough to enter flow. In situations where both skills and challenges were slight, people did not experience flow or actually, anything at all. Imagine playing a Tetris game set on minimum speed. You would most likely be very successful in sorting blocks and clearing rows but eventually it would result in complete boredom, even apathy.

These findings led to the modification of the prior schema. The new model included the concept of apathy (low skill/low challenge alternative), and a more detailed view on possible states when there is a discrepancy between skills and challenges. The center of the concentric circles represents an average level of skill/challenge that is different for every individual. In order to achieve flow, a person must perceive their own challenges and skills as higher than average. States of arousal and control are close to flow, and one can easily slip into the desirable flow state by making adequate modifications. A very important thing to notice is that we have the power to modify or change our challenges/activities, and improve our skills. In order to achieve flow from the state of arousal (high challenge but the skill is not quite there), we must improve our skills. On the other hand, when someone has a feeling of control (high skill, but the challenge bar could be set higher), one can easily slip into flow by increasing the challenge.  We all have the power to choose and we are responsible for our chosen objectives. Another important fact is that we can use the feelings presented in the second model as feedback that informs us what kind of  change we need in order to achieve flow.

way to slip into flow

 

Let’s return to our Tetris example. What happens if we increase the difficulty of the game to maximum without any prior practice?  Blocks would start filling the screen before we could react and the game would end, resulting in a player who would experience, maybe not anxiety, but certainly some level of dissatisfaction. What happens if we develop our Tetris playing skills but always stick to medium difficulty? In this case the player is in control (which is a good state to be in, according to Csikszentmihalyi) and can have a reasonable amount of fun, or, at some point, play the game for purely for relaxation. However, flow as an optimal state of mind can be easily entered from control just by increasing the difficulty and creating a more challenging task.

How to nurture flow in your family

Rathunde, one of the authors who studied flow, specified five family characteristics that provide an optimal context (autotelic family context) for adolescents to achieve flow.

  1. Clarity – adolescents have a feeling they know their parents’ expectations. Communication in the family should be unambiguous and goals explicitly defined. Parents need to provide clear feedback regarding the adolescent’s behavior.
  2. Centering – adolescents have a feeling that their parents are truly interested in their actions, feelings, and experiences. Parents need to explore the teenagers likes and dislikes, and pay close attention to both verbal and non-verbal communication.
    Existence of choices – adolescents have freedom of choice. They can even disobey the rules set by their parents if they accept the consequences. This may be hard for parents to accept, but having freedom of choice has many positive effects, including development of an internal locus of control – the feeling that we can have control over various life events.
  3. Commitment – children need to feel secure in order to lose themselves in an activity. If parents threaten to withdraw their love from a child every time a rule is broken, the child can become anxious and insecure.
  4. Challenge – parents need to create/provide increasingly complex opportunities for action. In doing so, parents must be careful not to set challenges way above or below the skill level of their children. Providing both support and challenge helps your children become more confident and independent.

These 5 C’s of nurturing – clarity, centering, choices, commitment, and challenge – set the stage perfectly for adolescents to be able to enter the state of flow. As mentioned earlier, there are numerous positive effects of flow. Some even argue that regularly experiencing flow is the secret of happiness. Because of that, it is not surprising that there are experts on flow who can help adolescents and parents create an optimal environment and bring more flow into their lives.

by Marko Nikolić

References:

  1. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding flow: The psychology of engagement with everyday life. New York: Basic Books.
  2. Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Csikszentmihalyi, I. S. (1988). Optimal experience: Psychological studies of flow in consciousness. New York: Cambridge university press.
  3. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Flow and the foundations of positive psychology. Dordrecht: Springer.
  4. TED Talk – Flow, The Secret To  Happiness (2004).

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Are You A Helicopter Parent?

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It’s perfectly normal to be concerned for your child’s safety.

Parents feel the urge to keep their kids protected from any perceived threat that could harm them. However, our best intentions can trick us into going overboard to make sure our children are safe and lead us onto an emotional slippery slope that could actually harm the child.

One of the biggest parenting challenges is how to support your child in a way that helps them feel secure but also helps them build resilience – the ability to “bounce back” when something goes wrong.

With so many terrifying stories in the media, how can we know that the next risk we take won’t be the one we regret?

Protective Bubble: “I seriously need to wrap my kid in bubble wrap.”

Write down a list of daily concerns you have about your child.
Then, write down the things you do each day to address those concerns.
Now, ask yourself – what would happen if I stopped doing these things?

Our own fears can sometimes overwhelm us. A reaction aimed at helping us cope can easily turn into a habit with time, if it has proven successful. We continue to do things to protect ourselves and people we love, even after the perceived threat has passed. Worst-case scenarios linger in our minds long after the “real” threat is gone.

The protective bubbles we create frequently do indeed protect our children from harm. But when well-meaning protection is carried to extremes, our kids are denied the opportunity to develop their own capacity to deal with difficult situations.

This can mean that, when faced with a challenge, they get trapped by that “fixed mindset” persona inside them that gets scared of a failure they may never have even experienced: “I can’t do it! I’m not ready!” Or they may be experiencing Learned Helplessness that prevents them from even knowing where to start when dealing with a problem.

Clearly, we’re not talking about life-threatening situations where they undoubtedly need your support. We’re talking about those situations where, no matter how much you want to be there for them, you need to let them experience the consequences of their decisions.

Let’s say you’ve invited a couple of families to your home on a Saturday evening. While you’re all talking on the deck, you hear noises in the basement. Turns out, kids were teasing your child and calling them rude names. What do you do?

Your child got a bad grade on a test they’d studied for, because the teacher decided to set different types of problems at the very last minute. They feel really disappointed and think that’s unfair because it’ll affect their grade significantly. Do you go talk to that teacher?

Your son’s or daughter’s soccer coach believes in the “tough love” approach, to which the child doesn’t react well. Do you go talk to the coach?

Before you intervene, we’d like you to give yourself a chance to consider the option of your child being able to deal with these situations on their own.
“What if they fail?” “What if they get hurt?” “What if they get embarrassed?”
You might be having these thoughts. And that’s okay.
You want what’s best for your child and you’re concerned.
Still, does that mean you should run to help every time they stumble?

Removing obstacles, keeping the path of life “clean” and “flat” so that a child can safely walk through childhood is one of those solutions that might seem beneficial in the short-term, but is never a sustainable one. Why? The very world that a parent is trying to protect them from, will reach them eventually. And when it does, it’s important they know how to navigate it.

How can we help?

We want to help our kids develop mechanisms to cope with the world inside them and the world around them.
How can we do this?

Help your child understand the reasons behind your worry and suggest ways they could deal with challenging situations they confront. We know that it’s never easy to put that into words – but try anyway!

Teach them and guide them through these experiences rather than “protecting” them from them. Analyze what happened in situations where they felt they were treated unfairly. Brainstorm on different ways they might handle things next time.

Help them discover their strengths and abilities to deal with different challenges.

If they’re discouraged, try to understand what would encourage them.

Lead by example. Show them that all learning starts by making mistakes from which we grow.

Problems are strength-training for our brains. They toughen our mental muscles. You won’t be able to stop every single obstacle from reaching your child. However, you can be there to support your kids as they learn how to fly on their own. You’ll probably be surprised at how well they do and their sense of pride and confidence will grow the more opportunities they have to handle challenges themselves.

One of the most famous writers from my country, Duško Radović, says:

“If you solve all of your children’s problems, the only problem they will have is you.“

Do you agree?

by Ana Jovanovic

Coach for Nobel Coaching

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Do Children Need Role Models?

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I want to be like Superman. He fights bad guys!

The gamer I watch on Youtube didn’t graduate and he’s still doing awesome and making more money than some college graduates. So, why should I study more of what I’m not good at and neglect what I am good at?

My dad studied very hard so he could get a good job and earn lots of money and buy this huge house we live in.

If the values of our society could be represented through the image of the role models our children choose, what do you think they would be?

Merriam-Webster defines a role model as “a person whose behavior in a particular role is imitated by others.”

Some consider role modeling a driving force in learning in that we emulate an example we perceive as desirable. Now, even if we don’t agree that role modeling is the most powerful way to learn, it’s nevertheless the way our children learn. So, we need to be concerned with how they learn, or rather, from whom they’re learning.

The market of potential role models consists of every single character that your child has ever seen – real or fictional, young or old, male or female, living or historical… Every. Single. One.

Who they choose as their role models depends on various factors.

How do we choose our role models?

Let’s play a game! We’ll try to read your thoughts.
Please follow our instructions:

  1. Think about somebody you admire. Somebody who inspires you.
  2. Now that you have that person in your mind – What is this person doing that you find so inspirational? How does this person behave?

Our guess is that the answer to #2 reflects:

  1. How you already act
  2. How you currently aspire to act
  3. How you wish you could act one day

Are we right?

Our role models are our psychological support in the challenges we face throughout life. They help us distinguish good from bad, right from wrong. We choose them for a specific purpose – to give us support and guidance when we need them. We choose them to stand by our side when we’re fighting for a goal, when we feel discouraged, when we’re uncertain about what to do next. We choose them because they appeal to us, because they represent a desirable image we should strive to attain one day.

Why do you think our children’s reasons might be different?

What kind of role models do our children choose?

Children choose their role models according to what they find appealing, That, of course, depends on their needs, preferences, challenges, aspirations…
If you don’t know what kind of role models your child chooses, ask them. They’ll tell you. However, be careful not to judge the book by its cover. The same role models might be chosen for different reasons. Some might opt for Superman because of his strength, some because he can live a double life without anyone knowing who he really is.

role model for kids infographics

 

How can we help our children choose the right role models?

Step 1: Find out who they look up to

Ask:
Who’s your hero?
Who do you look up to?
Who inspires you?
Who do you want to be like when you grow up?

Step 2: Understand the similarities between your child and their role model

Ask:
What do you have in common with this character?
How are you two similar?

Step 3: Understand the differences between your child and their role model

Ask:
How are you different from this character?
Is there something this character can do that you’d like to do, but can’t?
Is there something this character has, that you don’t?

Step 4: Find out what your child most values in this character

Ask:
What do you like most about this person?
If you could pick this person’s best quality, what would it be?

Step 5: Check your understanding

Share your understanding of what this character represents for your child.

(Don’t describe what this character is to you! Focus on your child’s perception.)

Example: So, when you grow up, you want to be just like Mr. Blake. He’s your favorite teacher. Both you and Mr. Blake love math and are very good at it. Everybody loves Mr. Blake because he’s the best teacher, even to those kids who hate math. What you most like about Mr. Blake is that he always wants to help you out. Right?

You can always ask more questions to get a better picture…

How do you know that everybody loves Mr. Blake?
What does Mr. Blake do to help out?

Step 6: Look for the connection

Look into the connection between the role model and your child, and the top quality that your child sees.

“Everybody loves Mr. Blake…  Even the kids that hate math.”

“He always wants to help out.”

Maybe the kids who hate math aren’t very nice to be around. Mr. Blake might be a bit of a “geek” and still be popular. If your child were more like Mr. Blake, would he fit in better?

Don’t jump to conclusions, though. Ask questions and let your child tell you whether something makes sense or not

Step 7: Role modeling

Ask:
What has Mr. Blake most helped you with?
What are you learning from Mr. Blake?
What can Mr. Blake teach you?
What skill can Mr. Blake help you with?
What do you see Mr. Blake do, that you’ve started doing?

At this point, you’ll probably be able to tell whether Mr. Blake is the “right” choice of role model for a child who, let’s suppose, doesn’t really get along with the popular kids.

Now, following on, you’ll probably want to help your child think about what Mr. Blake does or doesn’t do that helps him be so loved.

You might also be able to think of some good movies, books, stories, or other examples of people dealing with the same challenge who might help.

“You know who Mr. Blake reminds me of? Let me find that movie and I’ll show you.”

Another step you might consider is asking your child how they might respond if their role model were to mess up. That could open up a whole new discussion about how the role model is perceived, what kind of mistakes they could possibly make, and how tolerant the child might be of those mistakes.

The role models we choose are similar to training wheels on a bike, which give us the impression we know how to ride a bike even though we haven’t quite acquired the skill. They fulfill their role in teaching us that we can do something, and they encourage us to follow their lead and achieve what we deem important.

This teaching function of role models is why we should try to understand who they are. The odds are they will be one of the most influential teachers our children will have.

More about the parents’ role

Our children’s self-image is largely built on who we, the adults in their lives, think they are. They do something well, we tell them: “Oh, you’re so smart.” They stumble on a rock, we say: “You’re clumsy.” Sometimes it seems children are collecting all the adjectives we use to describe who we think they are, mentally noting our tone of voice, consequent actions, and how often we use those descriptions, into one great pool of attributes they’ll one day call their personality. While some might say: “My child was like that from day one!” others might say this or that particular feature is something you noticed as a parent first, something that you labeled (“as shy, stubborn, hyperactive”) and something you either tried reinforcing or changing.

Parents are our first role models. They give us an intuition of what is valued or not. What’s acceptable, what’s not. What’s desirable and what should be avoided. Of course, as children grow up they become more able to compare their parents to other people. (It starts with questions, usually followed by criticism. If you’re a parent of a teenager, you definitely know what we’re referring to.)

Parents are their children’s first representatives of how society operates.

At first, children imitate what’s at hand; then they imitate behaviors they believe are valued.
First, they will imitate dad cursing in front of the TV while watching football, just because they see it. Then, they’ll start doing it because it seems like the “right” way to watch a good game.

What does your child perceive as the values you are conveying through your own behavior? This is not to blame parents if a child has chosen a “wrong” role model. This is to help reflect on how we communicate values to our kids and how they are interpreting our communication.

by Ana Jovanovic
Coach at Nobel Coaching

 

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Understanding Shyness: How to Help a Child Who Is Shy

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Jake is that kid on the playground who waits for others to tell him he can join in the game. Sometimes, it seems it’s much easier for him to be alone in his own world than to talk to others. He definitely doesn’t enjoy talking to people he’s not familiar with. He’s quite talkative at home, though. He also doesn’t enjoy being the center of attention. And when he is, he hesitates to speak up; he tends to mumble and easily gets confused. He’s only comfortable talking about Math because he loves it. For anything else, even if he knows the answer, he seems afraid to say it. 

They don’t quite understand why.

Jake’s parents say he’s very shy.

“Shy”

Such a little word, a simple and familiar adjective, that carries so much meaning.

Shyness is often linked to anxiety, a lack of confidence, or low social intelligence. It is often connected to those experiences where you might have felt uncomfortable, embarrassed, or socially inadequate. It leads people to avoid situations in which they perceive some sort of a threat.

Many people have unproven but strongly-held theories that shy people don’t have much of a chance of succeeding in life. It seems as though the world favors dynamic extroverts who connect easily with others. Consequently, parents often seek professional help when they feel that their children might be behaving in a way they perceive as shy.

Where does shyness come from?

There are many theories which attempt to explain how shyness develops.

Some argue there is something “built in” that makes us shy and others claim we might have picked it up by watching somebody important to us act in a similar manner. Some might say that we are, from an early age, aware of our shortcomings, which makes us feel insecure in the presence of a group. Generally speaking, “shyness” could denote a feeling of inadequacy in regard to certain expectations (i.e. Everybody is good at sports. I am the only one who’s clumsy).

But we’ll take another path.
Let’s not look at the theories. Let’s focus simply on understanding each child individually.

How not to be supportive

Let’s start with how you certainly won’t show understanding.

Describing your child as shy everywhere you go and interpreting every single behavior that includes withdrawing from the group as shyness won’t help. Also, telling them not to blush every time they do might be a bad idea. Making excuses for them every time they stall, get confused, or refuse to talk to people might not be the best way to support them.

“He takes after his father. He’s not talkative either.” Comparing your child to someone else or speaking about their behavior as if it were a fixed trait isn’t going to be of much use. You want your child to believe they can change something they don’t like about themselves, right? So don’t make them feel they can’t.

Understanding ourselves as parents

Now, here’s how you can help.

Explore why it is that your child might be acting in a way you think of as shy.
Ask yourself the following questions so you can understand better.
It’s important to be aware of your own thoughts and impressions.

  • How do I know that my child is behaving shyly?

(Recognize the specific behaviors. It’s important to distinguish specific behaviors from our interpretations of those behaviors.)

  • When did I first notice my child acting this way?

(The behavior could be seen a reaction or response to a specific event in the past.)

  • Why do I think this might be a problem?

(It is important to acknowledge our own understanding of the way our child is behaving and what we see as the effects of that behavior.)

  • What do I think are the main reasons for my child’s shyness?

(We need to take into consideration the variety of different factors that might be influencing the child to behave that way.)

  • What are the consequences of my child not changing?

(Recognizing and understanding your own fears and worries is one of the most important steps.)

  • When is this shyness most apparent?

(You can try to recognize specific triggers by looking at specific situations.)

  • Are there any situations where the shyness eases?

(What is it about these situations which differs them from those in which your child is extremely shy?)

  • How do I react when I notice my child being shy?

(What we say and do has a significant bearing on how our children behave.)

  • How does my child respond to my reaction?

(The response is often a reflection of how the child sees our reaction.)

  • Is there anyone else in the family who acts the way my child does?

(“Shyness” is often a learned behavior.)

  • Have I ever asked my child why they are behaving like this?

(If not, why haven’t I?)

  • Do I understand how my child perceives the situations in which they are shy?

(How does the world look through the eyes of my child?)

Sometimes, we might be too emotionally invested to be able to answer these questions and reflect upon our answers. But that’s what Coaches are for. The Coaches navigate you through this exploration process with their questions.

Understanding your child

Now, all the above questions can be modified to help your child express their perspective, too.

What’s important is to understand that this “shy” voice inside your child, even when it’s quite dominant, is just one of the many voices inside them. Your child might take the lead in some situations, even though in many more they decide to stay on the side. Help your child recognize that part of themselves that keeps them stuck. Look at those situations where you see the same behavior and ask the child what they have in common. It might be that the common denominator is a trigger for that part of you that says “You’re going to embarrass yourself”, “You’ll fail” or “Nobody likes to be around you”. Don’t disregard or ignore that part. Try to understand why it’s there.

Frequently, when we detect a behavior that we “don’t like” to see in our children we try to find ways to eliminate it. However, every single behavior has its own internal logic and a purpose which needs to be understood. Shyness can often protect a child from getting involved in situations where they feel they might get hurt.

Again, our emotional bias sometimes makes this hard to do. We have the impulse to protect our child from feeling bad, which is why, when they share a thought such as “Nobody likes me”, we’ll try to convince them that’s not true. The Coach would continue with questions such as “How do you know that?” or “When did you notice that?”

Suggestions on what to do

Each segment in this section is a suggestion on what you could do.

Understanding is always the first step.

There are specific strategies on how to help a child open up and feel free to explore their actions in everyday situations. Feel free to use whichever seems to make the most sense for your child.

  • Give your child a chance to practice getting by in unfamiliar situations. This doesn’t mean you should expose your child to a frustrating situation unprepared, and show them over and over again how they’re not managing it. It means that you should take them with you, teach them and make suggestions, and then let them deal with the situations on their own, step by step. For instance, you could take your child to the park and tell them: “Why don’t you go up to that kid over there and ask: ‘Do you want to play with me?’ Mom can’t play with you now. It’ll be much more fun with another child. Just go over there and try it. I’ll be right here waiting for you.” Encourage your child to participate in interactions with others.
  • There’s no need to describe your child as shy in front of the child. A “shy child” can easily become a role children slip into and start playing without wanting to relinquish it. Any chance to adopt more easy-going behavior should be supported and rewarded. Help your child explore some other sides of themselves. The creative one? The playful one?
  • Show your child that you want to understand them. Try to understand the way your child sees other children in their peer group and how they think those children see them. In case your child tells you that they know other children are mocking them or that they see other children as evil and bad, try not to be defensive but consider other options you could take. How would your child like to be seen by other children? Why can or can’t they achieve that? Why do they think that the way they are is exclusively good or bad (depending on how they think of themselves)? Use the answers your child gives you as a way to continue the conversation and better understand, and not as a reason to attack another child or condemn other parents.
  • Check – maybe your child simply prefers playing alone as opposed to playing in a group. Try to understand why. What wouldn’t they have if they played in a group? What would they lose if they did this? What are the risks of playing in a group?
  • Ask your child without judgment: “It sometimes seems you’re avoiding other kids and don’t want to talk with people very much (describe the “symptoms” of shyness). Is there a reason you do this?”
  • Pay attention to the way your child perceives the situation in which they are usually shy. How do they describe it? What do they feel? While the child is telling you about this, be aware of your own expectations regarding your child’s behavior.

how to support your shy child

 

Bear in mind that every child is different.
That is why the path to helping your child is understanding them.

The reasons why somebody acts in a certain way are highly individualized. Don’t generalize.
We attribute so many meanings to that simple adjective  “shy”. Let’s understand those meanings.

by Ana Jovanovic

Coach at Nobel Coaching & Tutoring

 

If you need any kind of advice related to the social development of your children, you’ve come to the right place!

Schedule a FREE CONSULTATION with one of our Coaches:

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Nobel Coaching & Tutoring: A Referable, Complementary Resource

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As all licensed school counselors are aware, The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) developed an extremely valuable tool called The ASCA National Model: A Framework for School Counseling Programs (3) that identifies how a school counselor can be most effective in the school. Not only does it define what a comprehensive, data-driven school counseling program looks like, it also suggests a suitable student-to-school-counselor ratio, and helps counselors determine appropriate activities and how best to allocate their time.

To briefly depict the “ideal” school counselor scenario: All school counselors will have a ratio of maximum 250 students to each school counselor, will be able to use at least 80% of their time providing direct or indirect services, and will only engage in designated “appropriate” activities.

There is a small percentage of school counselors in the nation who are fortunate enough to work in this ideal scenario, which means they are probably more likely to be able to prove their effectiveness by addressing all of the ASCA Mindsets & Behaviors for Student Success: K-12 College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Every Student (2) through evidence-based practices. These same school counselors are probably able to engage in professional development activities to ensure they are up to date with the best practices and latest research so they meet all the ASCA School Counselor Competencies (4) on which many school counselors are now being evaluated through state legislation.

Many school counselors are inspired by this scenario that ASCA has laid out so perfectly and will add to their list of responsibilities to advocate more and more for their role, hopefully with some success. Many other school counselors are shrugging their shoulders in despair because they know they will never ever be free of inputting student schedules or planning the administration of state testing or daily supervising students during lunch.  This discouragement is not necessarily because they are not advocating or because their administration doesn’t know they would be more effective without those extra roles or additional students, but because resources are scarce and all their colleagues are also stretched and pulling more weight than they would like as well.

Many educators may be even more worried because resources are likely to be stretched further based upon the decreased funding by the federal government as proposed in the President’s FY 2018 Budget Request for the U.S. Department of Education (5). Regardless of whether the long-term effects are positive or negative, there will be additional fiscal pressure put on schools until states and local communities are able to find ways to replace the money, which will probably be done through property-owning taxpayers. Using property taxes to fund vital, but not necessarily mandated resources, like school counseling services, has been considered unconstitutional by many, since property taxes in many urban or rural communities are much lower than in affluent suburban communities.

School counselors are creative and tenacious, though!  Even when their student-to-counselor ratio is 500 or 650 or 800 or 1200 to 1, they are still making a difference in the lives of so many students. They use their organizational and time-management skills to allocate their services to impact as many students as possible, while being responsive to those students most in need. They discuss options with their administration and colleagues to support students, families, and staff members as comprehensively as possible. They address barriers to learning and work cooperatively with other student services personnel within the school. They notice when more intensive support is needed and refer students and families to outside resources to address potential mental health and/or learning needs.

School counselors are very aware of student needs, but sometimes they are unable to meet them fully, usually through no fault of their own. They literally cannot do all the work that is on their plate in many instances. When the additional responsibilities, i.e. test administration, scheduling, coordinating student study teams, lunch/recess duty, etc., are not going to be lifted from their plates anytime soon, they have to be extra creative. Oddly enough, many school counselors may start hyper-focusing on one main responsibility or on a limited number of students in their caseloads.

As mentioned before, ASCA has identified a fairly comprehensive list of “Inappropriate Activities for School Counselors” that many school counselors use to advocate for their role to administrators, usually with an attempt to stop assisting with discipline or enforcing dress codes or covering lunch duty. However, many school counselors find it difficult to not engage in long-term counseling in schools to address mental health conditions, either diagnosed or undiagnosed. Fortunately, ASCA has also developed the ASCA Ethical Standards for School Counselors (1), where there are many detailed examples of how school counselors can support students while making the most ethical decisions, including an entire section on Appropriate Referrals and Advocacy – A.6.a-e.

 

ASCA FRAMEWORK EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Inappropriate Activities for School Counselors:

“providing therapy or long-term counseling in schools to address psychological disorders”

ASCA ETHICAL STANDARDS FOR SCHOOL COUNSELORS

A.6. Appropriate Referrals and Advocacy
b. Provide a list of resources for outside agencies and resources in their community to student(s) and parents/guardians when students need or request additional support. School counselors provide multiple referral options or the district’s vetted list and are careful not to indicate an endorsement or preference for one counselor or practice. School counselors encourage parents to interview outside professionals to make a personal decision regarding the best source of assistance for their student.

ASCA ETHICAL STANDARDS FOR SCHOOL COUNSELORS

c. Connect students with services provided through the local school district and community agencies and remain aware of state laws and local district policies related to students with special needs, including limits to confidentiality and notification to authorities as appropriate.

ASCA ETHICAL STANDARDS FOR SCHOOL COUNSELORS

d. Develop a plan for the transitioning of primary counseling services with minimal interruption of services. Students retain the right for the referred services to be done in coordination with the school counselor or to discontinue counseling services with the school counselor while maintaining an appropriate relationship that may include providing other school support services.

Often the school counselor is only trying to help even when they know that the school setting is rarely the best therapeutic location and even when they know they are not licensed and/or hired for this relationship with students. Sometimes the school counselor does not have a trustworthy or local resource to refer students and families too, or the family finds it difficult to follow through with the referral due to busy schedules and inconvenient appointment times. This makes it difficult for school counselors to just watch a student suffer without the support they need.  Refraining from long-term counseling in school is even more difficult when the students’ teachers continue to ask for assistance because the students may be at risk for failure, dropping out, not graduating, decreased chance of college acceptance, or suspension/expulsion from school, due to insufficient executive functioning skills, lack of motivation or confidence, or other issues.

School counselors can and should work with these students by providing organizational tools, developing skills for resilience, engaging in goal-setting, addressing chronic truancy, and working on short-term, solution-focused problem-solving to remove barriers to accessing their education. School counselors cannot and should not meet with every student individually to work on underlying reasons why they are not finding success or optimizing their life weekly for ongoing counseling.

Nobel Coaching & Tutoring is available as a referable resource for those school counselors who know their students need additional support from a trustworthy agency. Nobel Coaching & Tutoring is convenient for those families who are busy and active. Nobel Coaching & Tutoring is accessible globally for any type of community. Nobel Coaching & Tutoring is here to support school counselors in their mission, expand their circle of influence, open the door for students to obtain the extra support they need, and assist parents who want to help their children.  Nobel Coaching & Tutoring is the bridge between school counseling and more traditional therapeutic interventions.

Not only does Nobel Coaching & Tutoring perfectly complement the work of school counselors, Nobel Coaching & Tutoring thinks very similarly to school counselors: They know that social-emotional learning is equally as important as building math, reading, and content skills. The students work with a Coach who is specifically trained to help address issues in motivation and focus. Students are also matched with Tutors who are experts in closing gaps in understanding in all subject areas. Another belief that Nobel Coaching & Tutoring shares with school counselors is that parents and families also need guidance in figuring out how to help their kids, so the Coaches also work with caregivers to ensure the student is really getting the comprehensive support they need. All of the services are offered online through Skype and other virtual applications at the convenience of students and families.

Many school counselors may be hesitant because this resource is new and different. However, most school counselors understand that the culture of social-emotional wellness and assistance is evolving to become more aligned with 21st Century technology and lifestyles. They know one of their main goals is to reduce the stigma of seeking support. Furthermore, most, if not all, school counselors know how much kids enjoy seeing themselves on their screens, too!

If you are a school counselor, school psychologist, school administrator, school teacher, or parent or guardian, Nobel Coaching & Tutoring wants to hear from you. Their goal is to complement what is being done in the school already by supporting students and their families outside of school. School Counselors and Nobel Coaching & Tutoring have similar missions and can become a great collaborative team helping all students achieve success and reach their potential!

by Renee Stack

Citation Sources:

  1. ASCA Ethical Standards for School Counselors.
  2. ASCA Mindsets & Behaviors for Student Success: K-12 College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Every Student.
  3. ASCA National Model: A Framework for School Counseling Programs.
  4. ASCA School Counselor Competencies.
  5. FACT SHEET: President Trump’s FY 2018 Budget. A New Foundation for American Greatness. Prioritizing Students, Empowering Parents.

Where Do Bad Grades Come From

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Long before they start school, children are given feedback on how they are doing in the form of stars, bows, stickers, and other tangible rewards. These are not only reinforcing for the child, but also for their parents. Once school begins, many parents assume that grades (whether expressed by numbers, letters, or smiles) are a good indicator of their children’s knowledge.

“You were great! You get an A!”

“You get five stars for reciting the poem!”

Consequently, when a child brings a test back home, parents will commonly remark solely on the grade itself: “Why did you get a C?” or, if the grade measures up to what the parents consider good enough: “Wow! You got a B+ on your test, I’m so proud of you!”
Bad grades alarm most parents, concerned that something “isn’t right”. To them, this usually means that the child is lazy, that they procrastinate, that their “attention is poor”, and so on.
Once you consult with professionals, you’ll see that they rarely rush into giving you a definitive answer as to the source of the problem.
This article aims to address some of the most common reasons for bad grades. Think of it as a “checklist” to direct your attention into exploring the possible issues that, when resolved, might help the student achieve better results.

They can’t or won’t study?

If there is a line between “can’t” and won’t”, ability and motivation, it is very thin. The two are often intertwined. Recognizing what comes first – difficulty with handling a task or a lack of willingness to do it – is a very important step for those working with the student.

Abilities – Reasons why they “can’t”

Cognitive abilities

Let’s start with abilities. Parents, unaware of an underlying problem, often push their children to succeed and exacerbate things by frustrating the child with demands the child can’t fulfill. It is important to assess whether the child’s cognitive status, their “intelligence”, is equal to the task. If there is a suspicion that the issue is the child’s intellectual ability, it’s necessary to contact a psychologist, who can determine, through testing, exactly what  “isn’t working” in the way the child thinks. After assessing the problem, the psychologist then designs a plan to work with the child. Other abilities we need to pay attention to are the student’s hearing and vision. You want to make sure there are no sensory problems causing the learning difficulties.

Attention problems

Cognitive-abilities testing also encompasses attention issues, with subtests specifically designed to gauge attention deficit. Frequently, a child simply gets distracted because the material isn’t interesting, engaging, and stimulating enough, not because they haven’t learned how to focus their attention. With gifted children, especially, it’s quite common to confuse a lack of interest for attention issues.
However, for some students, directing attention and maintaining focus is more difficult. Their brains just function differently. That’s why, if you see that no matter how much you try helping your child focus, and no matter how hard they are trying, nothing seems to really work, make sure you have them tested for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or attention deficit disorder (ADD).

This, of course, does not mean that once the student is diagnosed and gets treatment and begins focusing better, we should give up exploring how engaging the material and how difficult the task may be for them.  ADHD/ADD can often go together with various learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, dysgraphia or dyscalculia, as well as with students who are very interested and gifted in specific subjects and lacking interest in others.

Speech and language development

Speech therapists assert that reading and writing problems are rooted in earlier phases of speech and language development. Being able to differentiate the sounds that constitute a word or having sufficient vocabulary are both prerequisites for acquiring reading and writing skills. If your student has had problems with speech development, a consultation with a speech therapist is recommended.

There are also cases where the child’s abilities aren’t in question. The problem with grades is masking another problem.

Reasons why they won’t

Attention seeking (due to concerns at home)

Given that parents value and care about academic performance, a perceptive child can use their concern for bad grades as a means of manipulation to achieve a personal goal. This is not to imply something “bad” or “negative”. For instance, the child may figure out that a bad grade can divert a busy parent into dedicating more time and attention to what’s going on with them and help with homework even if that help is not actually needed.  For those children who feel uncomfortable communicating their need to spend more time with their parents, getting bad grades “on purpose” can be an effective strategy.

Bad grades can, in some cases, be seen as a symptom of challenges within the family. Family therapists have many times described examples where “helping the child with motivation” serves as a common goal for parents to work on together when the student sees the parents going through tough times in their marriage. The student offers the problem to help change the family dynamics. This is not to say that bad grades are caused by inadequate parenting. It says that to understand where bad grades come from, the dynamic within the family should be addressed and better understood.

The subject, the teachers, the peers

When we talk about a student’s motivation, it’s important to consider whether the student is not getting good grades in all their classes or only in specific ones. Some classes might just not “suit” the student’s skills and interests in a way that motivates them to push harder. They might see a class as boring and not worth the effort. Try exploring with the student: “If there was anything that could make Math fun, what would that be?” or “If you had a chance to transform your Language Arts class, how would you do it?”

The student-teacher relationship is also an important factor to consider.  Teachers play a major role in sparking a student’s interest in a subject and we need to learn the student’s opinion of the teacher in a class where they’re not performing well.   Another question worth asking is: “Who’s in your class?” Just imagine a teenage boy in the same class with a girl he really likes, and you’ll get the idea about why this is a good question.

The “I don’t care about grades” approach

Sometimes, when asked why they don’t want to try to do better in school, the student will just shrug, “I’m lazy and I don’t want to do it.” This can leave the parents frustrated and feeling helpless. How can you support a kid who does not want any support?
That is precisely the right kind of challenge for Coaches. We unpack “the box” of behaviors that the label “lazy” has been put on.
We look carefully into the meaning of all of those behaviors headed “lazy”. Perhaps the child isn’t used to doing something that demands more work and did all their previous tasks with ease (or the tasks were too easy and this is the first time they’re being faced with something that requires more effort). It may be that the student does not connect grades to any tangible goal they might have for themselves in the future. It might be that they feel better “saving” their energy for something with more meaning to them. In some cases, it’s easier not to try and call yourself “lazy”, than try, not succeed, and call yourself “a failure”.

The “good grades aren’t cool” approach

Are bad grades perceived as socially acceptable? “Cool”? For a student trying to fit in, academic performance can sometimes not count as much as being on the basketball team or having an amazingly cool shirt. So good grades can be “sacrificed” for the sake of different positioning within the social group.
How to deal with this challenge? We need to understand why it is so important for the student to fit into a specific group and why they see that as more significant than getting good grades.

Stage fright and other fears

There are cases where it’s not that the student doesn’t care about the grades but actually cares too much. So, when they “practice” at home, they achieve great results but have problems when it comes to presenting what they’ve learned. Tests, quizzes, exams, and other ways of assessing knowledge can be a great source of stress for children. Children, like adults, often suffer from stage fright and don’t perform at their best. If this ends up being a problem, the child should work on their fears with a professional Coach, who can help them identify key triggers and the source of those triggers. By reaching a deeper understanding of why the fear exists, the student and the Coach can come up with better ways to cope with it in a more functional way.

Where bad grades come from is a complex question to which the answers never come easily. Sometimes, we become so focused on what we perceive as a problem, that we miss the solution – or too focused on what we think is the solution, that we misunderstand the problem.
And given the emotional investment and attachment to their child, it makes it all the more difficult for parents to approach the problem in a way that would truly help.

That is why it is a good idea to consult with people who can help provide your student with the best possible support.

We have tried to outline the most common “roots” for bad grades. Bear in mind that this article cannot cover each issue in detail. That’s why we welcome your questions. We’ll be happy to answer them.

If you have any questions about your children’s bad grades, you’ve come to the right place!

Schedule a FREE CONSULTATION with one of our Coaches:

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by Ana Jovanović

THE GROWTH MINDSET – THE POWER OF YET

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One of the more talked-about topics in psychology and especially in educational psychology is Carol Dweck’s idea of the “growth mindset”, a concept she discusses in her book Mindset: The new psychology of success. Growth mindset isn’t something that Dweck invented and is now teaching us all how to attain. It is a distinctive trait she observed in people who are happier and more successful, which led her to seek ways to help develop and nurture it in people who do not share this predisposition.

So what actually is growth mindset?

While working as a young researcher, Dweck noticed that some children face challenges in a much more “positive” way than others. They would say things like “Oh, I love a challenge” or “I expected this to be informative”, instead of having tragic and catastrophic thoughts when faced with difficulties. Dweck coined the term “fixed mindset” for children who shrink before obstacles, and “growth mindset” for those who seek challenges and become even more engaged when faced with obstacles. Of course, these two mindsets apply to us all, and it is important to note that whereas we can’t have a growth mindset in every area of our lives, we sure can try to develop it.

To show what growth mindset really is, let’s try to contrast it further with the fixed mindset. People with a fixed mindset think that their characteristics are carved in stone and can never be changed. They firmly believe that intelligence, creativity, and personality are things we are born with and can hardly be something we develop. People with a growth mindset believe we can cultivate these characteristics through effort and that the process of cultivating them is more important than the actual outcome. A fixed mindset, on the other hand, wants results right away and doesn’t care as much about the process as it does about the outcome. Of course, Dweck doesn’t deny that people differ from the get-go, but she claims that we can all “change and grow through application and experience”.

Another thing that differentiates these two mindsets is how they perceive and react to failure. People with a fixed mindset are more likely to believe they can fail and that by doing so their abilities will be questioned. Just the act of hitting obstacles would prove to them that they aren’t capable of overcoming them. People with a growth mindset, on the other hand, don’t really see failure as on option – obstacles are just perceived as opportunities to improve and learn, and by being faced with them and, generally something new, we get smarter.

Dweck illustrates this difference further with an interesting remark about language and how we use it to rate success. She mentions how saying “not yet” to students instead of saying they failed a class is a much better way to show them that even if they have difficulties overcoming something now, the time will come when they will succeed if they continue tackling the obstacle from different angles. The use of “yet” shows that there is a learning curve, and points to the process, not the outcome. This also tells children that they aren’t being taught to learn simply for grades, but for their future and it encourages them to dream big and think about what they want to do with their lives, instead of on focusing only on what they are currently achieving in school.

This entire idea of the power of yet and growth mindset isn’t just something Dweck came up with and wrote overnight. She (and many others) actually did research and showed time and time again that if a growth mindset is encouraged, children earn better grades and achieve better results than they did before – even better than some of their peers from much more affluent schools, which shows that growth mindset is a great path to achieving a more equal education system.
This research illustrates two important facts about growth mindset: it does work and it can be developed. It is not something we are born with.

What is a false growth mindset?


Developing a growth mindset has never been easier. 

Book your FREE CONSULTATION with one of our Coaches.


Before we dive into the exciting topic of how a growth mindset can be developed, we need to do some myth-busting. As with any other trending topic in education, it is hard nowadays to avoid the words “have to”, “need to”, and “all” when reading about growth mindset. It is often declared that we should all have to develop growth mindsets because they are just so much better, which ignores the principle behind the concept. Firstly, a growth mindset isn’t something you can just achieve overnight. It takes a lot of work and develops over time. Secondly, it isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card you can use whenever you’re faced with difficulty. Dweck points out that we are a mixture of both growth mindset and fixed mindset, and at different times and in different areas of our lives either one can predominate.

Another point she makes is that people often claim they have a growth mindset when they actually don’t or use the concept of a fixed mindset to excuse why someone is failing when the only failure is actually not providing the context in which a growth mindset can be achieved. It is also easy to think that simply by encouraging children and praising their effort, we are developing their growth mindsets. It’s a bit more complicated than that – it is not just about praising, it is about praising the right way.

So how is a growth mindset developed?

Developing a growth mindset is a complex process, but it is not unattainable and can actually serve as a great first obstacle on which to practice our mindsets.

The main point that Dweck makes is that a growth mindset is developed through praise, but not the usual after-the-fact praise which focuses on outcomes, but the praise that focuses on the process of learning. This isn’t about blanketing children in praise for any of their efforts, but about praising the strategies they used and the entire process that leads to outcomes. A simple example of this would be saying “I love how you tried all these different strategies while solving this problem until you got it” instead of saying “Great job. I knew you’d get it, you are smart!”

That example showcases another point that Dweck makes; we should praise the process, not the abilities. Praising abilities encourages the fixed mindset that these things are set in stone, which definitely doesn’t promote change or development. Rather, it makes children think that what they can do is what they can do and the same applies for what they can’t do.

Another reason why Dweck insists “it is not the outcome, it is the effort that counts” is ineffective is because it lets students believe that if they try hard enough, they will succeed no matter their strategies. In effect, it can bring them to repeat the same futile strategies over and over again. On the other hand, insisting on the process or the use of multiple strategies until the obstacle is overcome, and praising that effort, teaches them that they need to change their strategies in order solve the problem. It also shows them they can use all the resources available and ask for help when they need it.

And finally, Dweck points out that even failure should be addressed as something that enhances learning. We can ask children “What is this teaching us? What should we do next?” instead of either praising the effort or protecting them by saying things like “Don’t worry, not everyone can be good in everything. You are not the only one that failed.” In both cases, we are developing a fixed mindset and letting children know that we believe they can’t do better, while a switch in mindsets would help them achieve so much more and help them in their future lives.

If you are already thinking of implementing these ideas while raising your child, there is more encouraging news. The growth mindset isn’t something we can start developing only in early childhood, Dweck says it is never too late for change, so why not try it on yourself, too, and see how it goes.

 

Help your child develop Growth Mindset.

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Family Night At The Movies – Talking With Your Teen About Inside Out And The Purpose Of Sadness

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In our series, Family Night at the Movies, we recommend movies for viewing and later discussion whose message may be helpful for teenagers and their parents.
In one of our previous articles, you can read more about movies as valuable tools in addressing the emotional and social needs of teens.

Our latest choice is Inside Out, the acclaimed Pixar animation movie of 2015 directed by Pete Docter, which deals with the emotions, specifically sadness:

The film is set inside the mind of an 11-year-old girl named Riley, with the main characters actually being her primary emotions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust, who argue and compete with one another. The conflict between Joy and Sadness forms the basis of the action.

Warning: spoilers!

When her father’s new job requires that the family moved to San Francisco, Riley’s emotions are thrown into turmoil. She has torn away from her familiar, harmonious Midwestern life and forced to adjust to a new environment. In this classically stressful situation, we watch the battle of her emotions as they try to navigate these new challenges in her life.

Taking into account that the complexity of psychological processes is impossible to fully explore in a movie, Inside Out nevertheless effectively illustrates how our emotions work and how they connect to happenings in the outside world and to our cognitive processes.

Various lessons can be taken from this movie, among them that all emotions are equally important and the danger of the imperative to stay positive all the time. We have addressed these in a previous article, Come to the dark side, we have emotions. Here, we address an important third lesson – the purpose of sadness.

Purpose of Sadness – Adaptation of Loss

Emotions are specific reactions to happenings that are important to us and the purpose of each is an adaptation to the change, reconnection with important others, and ultimately the ability to move on with our lives. We are sad when we anticipate or experience the loss of someone or something valuable to us, so the particular purpose of sadness is a psychological adjustment to loss.
At the beginning of the movie, Joy, Riley’s dominant emotion, introduces the other emotions. She explains why each of them is important to Riley and points out that they all work as a team. However, when she comes to Sadness, Joy just skips it, admitting that she doesn’t really understand its purpose. So, in the face of this stressful situation, Joy prevents Sadness from acting and does not allow Riley to be sad, although that is clearly her most natural emotional reaction. She is losing her old way of life and being forced to adjust to a new one. She misses her old house, her friends, her hockey team, and also her father, who is more frequently absent because of his new job. She is struggling to adapt.

When we allow ourselves to experience certain emotions, many processes in both our mind and body work in concert to prepare us for action. The work of sadness differs in that when we are sad we feel listless and to all appearances become passive. Yet our mind is working actively to try to process the loss and reorganize our inner world in order to adapt to the new reality.

Purpose of Sadness – Relief and Connection

Another important function of sadness is its specific bodily expression. When we experience sadness without repression and let it flow freely through our body, we manifest specific facial expressions and body posture and will cry or sob.

Crying is a natural healing process. When we cry we are relieving tension and pain from our body as if the tears were melting the pain and alleviating our sadness. The release is complete with deep crying that involves sobbing since our distress is expressed through our voice and a different pattern of breathing. After a while, breathing is deeper, the body is relieved of tension and we feel much better. Reassure your children of any age; give them permission, let them know it’s okay to cry.

The specific body language associated with sadness has its social dimension, too. It is obvious to others that we are sad and they may show compassion. This is what, in the end, Joy finally recognized and came to understood to be the purpose of Sadness.

When Joy allowed Sadness to act and Riley finally expressed her sadness, her parents hugged and comforted her. In her distress, Riley’s image of “family” had collapsed and almost caused her to run away. Now the family was once again a team, reunited and reconnected.

Danger of Repressing Sadness

Sadness or any other emotion can be repressed when it is perceived as less valuable. “Being sad is for weaklings. I must be strong.” Our system of values is mainly formed through family and wider cultural influences.
Today we are witnessing a global trend which values “positive thinking”; a sort of industry of happiness to keep us smiling, optimistic, shiny and happy, which is not in accordance with our psychological makeup. Under certain circumstances, it is natural to feel fear, sadness, or anger. Every repression, denial, or compulsion to feel differently than we actually feel, leads to imbalance.

This is exactly what we learn in the movie. Since Joy doesn’t understand the purpose of Sadness and is afraid Sadness will spoil Riley’s happy life and infect her joyful memories, she multitasks in order to keep each new experience positive or funny at all costs.

The pressure to stay positive is even stronger when her mother praises Riley for staying so cheerful despite everything, implying that if both of them just keep smiling it will ease the pressure Riley’s father is going through. We’ll see later in the movie the consequences of this attitude. It is a reminder also for us parents to be careful with the messages we’re sending to our kids. You never know what kind of battle is going on in their heads and how they will interpret our words.

“Don’t feel” or “Don’t feel (certain emotion)” are frequent injunctions that repeat in the back of the minds of depressive or anxious clients going to therapy. The authors of Redecision Therapy, Goulding and Goulding, observed that when sadness is repressed, repression of joy and other pleasant emotions follows. As a consequence, a person is unable to emotionally bond with others.

That is why it is important to reassure your child of any age that feeling sad is okay. How do you do that? By understanding, allowing, and encouraging your child to feel and express sadness (and all other emotions), so cleansing can take place and the child can move forward. It is especially important to discuss later what happened and what made her/him so sad.

With teenagers, you can engage in even deeper conversations and we hope that some of the information in this article will help.

Ask your teens what they’ve learned from the movie. Did they ever feel as Riley did? What is the purpose of sadness, in their opinion? Can they identify their dominant emotion and the one they’re tending to neglect? For more about particular questions and how to lead a conversation after the movie, read here.

by Milena Ćuk,
Life Coach and Integrative Art Therapist-in-training

If you need any kind of advice related to the social/emotional development of your teen children, you’ve come to the right place!

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The Secrets And Learning Challenges Of Dyslexia

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If you have no idea what something looks like, you probably wouldn’t recognize it even if it was right there in front of you. You might not even notice it, right? But, if somehow it does attract your attention, you’d probably identify it as something you’re already familiar with, or try to explain it with what’s already known to you. We want an explanation for why things exist, even if that means inventing one!

Now, imagine – You see a “normal”, bright kid struggling with such a simple thing as reading.
How can that be?

If you have never heard of dyslexia, you might be tempted to call this kid “lazy”, “stubborn” or “not as bright as you thought they were”. You might think that the parents are being too soft and need to push the child to do better in school.

So, what is dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability. When you have dyslexia, your brain needs more time and energy for some of the processes many would say come “naturally” or “automatically”. Matching the letters on a page with the sounds that those letters and combinations of letters make is one of those things. People who have dyslexia experience difficulties with skills such as spelling, writing, and pronouncing words.

Who said reading was easy?

Nobody is born with the ability to read. (Obviously!) It is an activity that requires a lot from our brain, which needs to be able to focus on the letters, put them into words, then the words into sentences, and link the sentences into paragraphs so that we can read them –  and only then, understand the content of what we’re reading. So, when you see the letters D, O, G connected, your brain needs to pick up the letters, connect those letters to specific sounds and then read the word “dog” and also comprehend that the word on the paper is a symbol for a cheerful, four-legged animal that loves playing “fetch” with you.

So – reading is NOT easy, even though many think it is.

What causes dyslexia?

We’re still trying to figure out what’s actually going on in the brain. Anatomical and brain imaging studies show differences in the development and functioning of the brain in a person with dyslexia. What we know for sure is that most people with dyslexia have problems with identifying the separate speech sounds within a word. Understanding how the letters represent speech sounds seems to be the key factor in reading difficulties. What’s important to know is that this learning disability has nothing to do with how intelligent you are.

What are the risk factors for dyslexia?

People with dyslexia have, in many cases, experienced difficulties with learning to speak, difficulties with differentiating the sounds in speech, difficulties in learning letters, organizing spoken language, memorizing words, etc.
Also, the parents of dyslexic students tend to report delays in reaching common milestones of childhood, such as learning to crawl or walk or ride a bike.

What are the typical signs of dyslexia?

Depending on the age, dyslexia can be spotted through a variety of signs.
We’ll outline some of the most common ones.

PRESCHOOL

  • Difficulty learning new words
  • Difficulty guessing a word based on its description
  • Difficulty recognizing whether two words rhyme
  • Difficulty in pronunciation of familiar words
  • Difficulty sounding out unfamiliar words
  • Difficulty remembering multi-step instructions
  • Difficulty remembering the order in which things appear in a story
  • Difficulty structuring the answer about how the day went or how something happened
  • A child does not use as many words as peers do
  • A child tends to mix up words that sound familiar
  • A child tends to struggle to organize a story chronologically

GRADE SCHOOL

  • Difficulty learning letters (and writing them)
  • Difficulty differentiating similar letters both in writing and reading (like b and d)
  • Difficulty recognizing which letters produce which sound
  • Stalling while reading; guessing a word based on the first two letters
  • Difficulty isolating the middle sound of a word
  • Difficulty recognizing the spelling of a word
  • The student quickly forgets how to spell the words he reads
  • Struggles with word problems in math
  • Difficulty remembering the key elements of a story
  • The student focuses so much on the reading itself that he fails to remember and comprehend what he has read

MIDDLE SCHOOL

  • Makes a lot of spelling errors
  • Avoids all assignments that require reading
  • Takes a lot of time to finish homework that requires reading
  • Gets nervous while reading
  • The student reads at a lower academic level than they speak
  • The student tends to re-read sentences to be able to comprehend them
  • The student tends to forget what he has read
  • When reading, the student often makes pauses with “um” or filler words

There’s more to dyslexia than you’d think

Not being able to read and write at the same level as your peers can significantly affect how you see yourself. The peer group tends to mock the student who isn’t able to do things they do with ease. That is why it is extremely important to pay attention to how the student is feeling and how he sees himself.

The students with dyslexia tend to think “out of the box”. They are creative and innovative.
These are the strengths that any person working with a student with dyslexia should capitalize on.

What to do if you suspect that your child has dyslexia

  1. Consult with the experts – speech therapists and psychologists. They will do all the necessary testing to see whether the student has dyslexia.
  2. If it turns out that your student does have dyslexia, do not despair. There are many successful people who have this diagnosis. With proper treatment, you can help your child succeed in school. Just make sure you contact professionals on time.

If you need any kind of advice related to dyslexia, you’ve come to the right place!

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