Intentional Parenting

Middle School

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Proactive, Research -Based

Dale Jones jonesdale384@gmail.com

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As children reach their teens, the parent’s role must change from manager to consultant.

Dr. Mike Riera

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Meeting Norms

1. We’re all teachers and we’re all learners.
2. Confidentiality
3. We’ll start and end on time.
4. We’re all in this together. Mutual support…keep it going
5. Give yourself grace.
6. Share your challenges, and what’s working for you.

BIG Ideas

• You can’t change someone else.
• You must practice and plan ahead if you want to change your actions and responses.
• You and your parenting partners need to be on the same page.
• Punishment doesn’t work. Restitution and restorative justice do.
• “Big behaviors” are the result of a skill deficit, not a lack of motivation.
• An understanding of developmental traits will help you to better understand and relate to your adolescent child / adult.

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For many mothers, as well as fathers...parenting can be emotionally, psychologically, financially, and physically draining, yet few of us ever honestly share how exacting, incredibly tough, and emotionally burdensome we find it.

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...most of us walk the path of parenthood feeling alone, truly believing we are abnormal in our occasional longing to be who we were before we became a (parent). However, were we to reach across our mantles of perfection, we would discover a kinship with other parents and realize we aren’t at all unusual for having such feelings, just human.

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From The Conscious Parent by Dr. Shefali Tsabary

(Page 120) From the chapter titled “The Insanity of Parenthood.”

Quick Intro: I recently retired after 36 years as a principal and teacher. I taught 7th grade and special ed.

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My wife Anne taught special ed for over 30 years. My daughter Shannon is a Program Manager for a nonprofit in So Cal, and my other daughter Elaina teaches 4th grade in the East Bay.

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I’m a trainer of “Positive Discipline” (Jane Nelson) but I’ve also taken Systematic Training in Effective Parenting, Love & Logic, and Pat Belvel Parenting.

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I highly recommend a full parenting course. My favorites are Love and Logic and Positive Discipline.

Special thanks to Julie DiCocco for helping me with this presentation. Some of the slides are from her, and she gave me feedback on everything else.

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Julie is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) and the Manager of Student Support Services for the Union School District. She is an expert on behaviors and trauma.

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The teachers and students at Guadalupe also contributed to this presentation.

This is my favorite site when I’m faced with a challenging behavior and am not sure how best to help.

Dr. Laura Markham has a wonderful collection of articles about a wide range of behaviors and parenting challenges. She also offers an online parenting course, but it does have an enrollment fee.

Developmental Characteristics of Middle Schoolers

• More rapid physical, cognitive, and emotional growth than at any time except for infancy, but this time with an audience (real or perceived).
• Growing awareness of the world around them, which often includes fears of the future.
• Social connections become paramount. Empathy grows.
• Understand concepts and begin to question authority.
• Develop metaphorical language and vocabulary. Often enjoy debating.
• Begin to develop value system and beliefs.

Source: Understood.org

Adolescents are thinking with their emotional brains. This is likely exacerbated by the pandemic.

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Care Solace

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Care Solace Provides:

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• Care Concierge professionals available 24/7 by phone, email, text or video chat in any language

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• A dedicated Care Concierge to support you through the whole process, calling providers on your behalf to determine a fit

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• Help with private insurance, Medi-Cal, and no insurance

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• Completely confidential support

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• In-person, online, or teletherapy options

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• Appointment coordination for students, staff, and their families

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WAIT

Why Am I Talking?

Responding to behaviors...

This may be a helpful acronym to remember when your child is upset. They may not hear you at all, and if they do hear you they may misunderstand what you’re saying. When someone is overly stressed, anxious, angry, or sad their brain is not going to process language.

Scenario #1

Your child has just returned from school and answers “Okay” when you ask how her day was. Your cat walks in front of her and she kicks it, hard enough to hurt the cat and cause it to roll across the floor. She loves the cat and has never before done anything to hurt it.

What do you do?

Many Behaviors Are Impulsive. Yet we often respond as if the child planned out their actions, considered their options, and did it anyway!

• Children will feel badly after acting impulsively, especially if they hurt someone...or a pet.
• Given similar circumstances, they are likely to repeat impulsive behaviors. This is not a moral failing!
• Children gain impulse control as they mature, but this takes time.
• It’s important to address impulsive behaviors without making the child feel guilty over what they have a very difficult time controlling.

What to Do?

• Role Play - practice how to appropriately respond to triggers.
• Social Stories. These can be helpful for addressing many behaviors. There are many books and online resources, but the best social stories are the ones that you write yourself, because you can make it specific to your child and include photos, their name, etc.
• Name it. Talk with your child about impulse control.

This site has social stories by grade level. It’s designed for students with Autism, but the stories are beneficial for all children.

https://www.andnextcomesl.com/p/printable-social-stories.html

Curiosity Questions

Helping children explore the consequences of their behavior is much different from imposing consequences on them. P. 134 Positive Discipline

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What were you trying to accomplish?

How do you feel about what happened?

What do you think caused it to happen?

What did you learn from this?

How can you use in the future what you learned?

What ideas do you have for solutions now?

Why you shouldn’t punish

• It damages the relationship with your child.
• It generates fear and anger.
• It doesn’t teach or promote learning.
• It may bring a quick end to the behavior, but it doesn’t address the underlying causes.
• It promotes aggressive behavior.
• Research shows that it not only doesn’t work, it creates more misbehavior.

Research on children lying

• The higher their I.Q., the more likely they are to lie.
• Punishing children for lying increases the likelihood of more lying.
• Lying is not a moral deficiency in children, it’s a way that they develop more nuanced language.

“Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse? Think of the last time you felt humiliated or treated unfairly. Did you feel like cooperating or doing better?”

Dr. Jane Nelsen, Founder of Positive Discipline

What you can do instead of punishment

Let natural consequences provide constraints.

Set limits together when possible.

Connect before you correct.

Restitution / Restorative justice

Empathize with their feelings

Remember that children learn from your example, and that adolescents are hyper focused on hypocrisy.

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Our natural response to big behaviors is often to take power from children, when what they most need is a sense of autonomy, connection, and competency.

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Most (all?) behavior falls into one of these categories, or functions. When we know the function of the behavior, we can better intervene.

Sensory: The function of some behaviors do not rely on anything external to the person and instead are internally pleasing, or seemingly necessary.

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Escape: Many behaviors occur because the person wants to get away from something, is afraid, or wants to avoid something altogether (Miltenberger, 2008).

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Attention:A person may engage in a certain behavior to gain some form of social attention or a reaction from other people.

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Tangible (access to):For example, someone might scream and shout until their parents buy them a new toy (tangible item) or bring them to the zoo (activity).

Scenario #2

Your child has shut down. Until very recently, they were motivated at school and generally cooperative at home. Now they refuse to do any schoolwork, won’t play with friends after school, and are defiant with you when asked to do their chores.

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What do you do?

All behavior is a form of communication.

Mirror Neurons

Our emotional networks mirror what we see others feeling and doing

• We can catch children’s upset (like a virus) or download our calm to them

Maximize mirror neurons

• Use breathing to your advantage
• Make eye contact
• Offer choices/ specific instructions

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6 Common Childhood Responses to Stress or Trauma

1. Developmental Regression -may be significant
2. Increase in challenging behaviors
3. Somatic (physical) complaints
4. Intense emotions
5. Difficulty focusing

These responses may continue, or appear

long after the stressful or traumatic

event.

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Bullying or Conflict?

Bullying

• Imbalance of power
• Repeated
• Purposeful
• Seeking power
• No remorse

Conflict

• Equal Power
• Occasional
• Accidental
• Not seeking power
• Remorse

The research on disrespectful behavior

• Disrespect is most often an attempt by the child to have power, when feeling less than powerful.
• Reacting to each disrespectful comment actually increases the likelihood of more disrespect.
• Demanding respect is also likely to backfire. Why?

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• So… what do we do about it?

Challenge Success

• 73% of students listed academic stress as their number one reason for using drugs, yet only 7% of parents believe teens might use drugs to deal with stress.

Challenge Success (Stanford University)

• The number one stressor for students is academic pressure: grades, tests.
• The number two stressor is homework (3.5 hours per night average).
• Teens are averaging six hours a night of sleep.

challengesuccess.org

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Challenge Success recommends three research-based remedies:

Play time

Down time

Family time

Increases cognitive and social skills, empathy, and creativity.

Technology

Set limits together.

Remember that your actions speak much louder than your words.

Wait Until 8th (waituntil8th.org)

One of the best ways to address many different challenges for children of all ages is to have dinner together as a family on a regular basis, without electronics or media.

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In fact, research has found the following benefits:

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• Greater physical and emotional health
• Greater social skills
• Cognitive growth
• Improved performance in school

Eat dinner together, without media!

Ideas From the Kids About What Helps Them

Getting outside every day!

Exercising every day!

Having a regular schedule, but being given choices within that schedule

Working on projects with parents

Dedicated time for projects

Art Therapy!

From a Guadalupe Student

Building Resilience - Ideas From Dr. Rick Hansen, Clinical Psychiatrist at UC Berkeley

1. “Find your footing” / Clarify the situation
2. Calm and Center / Mindful breathing
3. Reach out and befriend others

Mindful breathing shuts down the default mechanisms in the brain that are inclined to worry about the future. This will decrease stress and allow us to live more in the moment.

“Action binds anxiety.”

Humans are prone to learned helplessness, but if we keep highlighting areas where we have agency this can be unlearned.

We also have a negativity bias, but gratitude makes us resilient.

Dr. J. Stuart Ablon is a psychiatrist who specializes in working with children who exhibit challenging behaviors. In this 20-minute TED Talk he emphasizes that challenging behaviors are almost always the result of a skill deficit of some kind and not a lack of motivation, but as caring adults we often respond to their behaviors with an effort to motivate them to do better, often through punishment and sometimes through rewards.

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If a child is struggling because of a skill deficit, then both punishments and rewards will not help them, and often will lead to greater frustration for both the child and their parents.

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If this video won’t play from this slide, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuoPZkFcLVs

Frustration Tolerance and Coping With Fear

Two skills that many children are struggling with now

Teaching Frustration Tolerance

• Allow your child to “sit” with their frustration for a while before talking to them, but be there for them.
• Brainstorm solutions together.
• Use their ideas as much as possible.
• Don’t solve their problems.
• Play board games together and don’t let them win every time.

Coping With Fear

• Don’t denigrate fear. It may save your child’s life! but model an appropriate, rationale response.
• Give your child power / a sense of control.
• Answer their questions factually, but don’t tell them everything. This is tricky, but let their questions guide you.

Teaching a skill is best done by coaching: Modeling, practice, etc. Learning a skill takes time!!

What is Trauma?

• Events or situations that overwhelm a child’s ability to cope with what happened
• Compounded when an adult is not present (co-regulator)
• Shuts down the part of the brain that is responsible for rational thought

When confronted with overwhelming stress, the brain shuts down its ability for higher-order thinking and goes into survival mode. Interestingly, in adolescence a similar function occurs as the emotional centers of the brain take priority. When responding to anyone in this state, logic and reason will likely not work, and you will need to provide emotional support and wait until the trauma has subsided.

Talking to Kids about traumatic events

Validate their feelings

Make them feel safe

Let them lead discussion

Answer questions factually, but just enough

Find the positives

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Avoid visual images

Should you allow your young teen to watch the news? Try NewsForKids.net instead

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Sources: PBS & Dr. Aliza Pressman

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What parents can do...

1. Acknowledge your child’s feelings
2. Calm yourself before responding
3. Be proactive - anticipate challenges
4. Resist the urge to punish!
5. Establish routines
6. Lower expectations for academic work and school.

Praise As Control

• Carol Dweck
• “The biggest mistake parents make is assuming that children aren’t sophisticated enough to see and feel our true intentions.”
• Frequently praised children are more likely to put other children down. Why?

Control vs. Autonomy

Control

• Parent has power
• Child follows directions
• Rewards and Consequences common

Autonomy

• Greater child well-being
• Better performance
• Higher creativity
• Improved personal relationships
• Deci & Ryan

Deci and Ryan are researchers at the University of Rochester, New York. They’ve been studying child development for over three decades and have found that children have an intrinsic desire to manage their own behavior and emotions, as they see this as the key to independence.

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Their desire doesn’t always match their ability (Remember, it’s a question of “skill, not will”) but we have to be very careful as parents and educators that we don’t do things that might diminish this intrinsic motivation, like emphasizing rewards and consequences.

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As parents, our instinct is to protect our children, but sometimes this desire becomes overly controlling and ironically puts our children in danger - of anxiety. I have never seen levels of anxiety as high as they are today, and that was before this pandemic.

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So giving our children more autonomy is counter-intuitive and scary, but it’s essential. One of the best ways to do this is to allow them to make more decisions for themselves, and then to live with the consequences of those decisions - good or bad. Resist the urge to rescue, or lecture!

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Too soon, our children will be making some of the most important decisions of their lives (Should I take that pill? Get in that car? Be alone with this person?) and when they make these decisions you won’t be there! This is why it’s so important to give them as many opportunities as possible, as early in their lives as possible, to make and live with their own decisions.

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Today’s parents deprive children of meaningful control over their own lives, leading to increases in anxiety and depression.

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Other theories about the increase in rates of anxiety include:

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• The opioid crisis
• Social Media
• Accommodating “normal” Child Anxieties
• Higher Accommodation = Greater Anxiety

Deci and Ryan

• Children will naturally internalize rules and develop self-restraint.
• Children want independence and learn that self-control is the key.
• Children are born with the intrinsic motivation to regulate themselves.

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In summary...

The Conscious Parent

• Partnership instead of dominance
• WE need to be molded, not our children.
• An opportunity to release ourselves from the need to be in control

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We read this book this year in our parent group at Guadalupe. It’s an excellent resource for learning more about control versus autonomy and other parenting challenges.

Grolnick Study

• Parents were instructed to sit with their children while they were given a new toy.
• Parents fell into two groups:
• #1 Repeatedly intervened
• #2 Let children explore but available

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Grolnick Study

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• Then the children were given a challenging task.
• The children whose parents were in group 1 gave up easily.
• The children whose parents were in group 2 persisted in trying to solve the problem.

AMP up motivation

• Autonomy
• Mastery
• Purpose

From Daniel Pink

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Many of you shared that your child does not seem to be motivated to do anything during Shelter In Place. Let’s explore these three keys to motivation to see why this may be the case, and what you can do about it.

Autonomy

Definition: The power to make decisions for one’s self.

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• Why this may be an issue now: There are always limits to everyone’s autonomy, and children in normal times love to explore those limits. Now we are all powerless in many ways and have had rights restricted or taken away. We may understand the reasons for this as adults, but many children don’t. Lethargy and refusals may be a response to the decrease in autonomy. This may be especially affecting children who had been developing greater autonomy when Shelter In Place started.

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• What to do? You should also give your child every opportunity to feel powerful by making family decisions together, giving them increased responsibilities like helping to make dinner, planting flowers or a garden, etc. Since many of you are working from home, invite your child to watch when appropriate and talk to them about your work.

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Mastery

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Definition: Mastery actually refers to the “just right” level of challenge - not so easy that it’s boring and not so difficult that it’s overly frustrating (a little struggle is a good thing) and defeating. Finding this sweet spot can be very challenging and it’s a moving target as children mature, and depending on the subject.

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• Why this may be an issue now: Finding the sweet spot for each student is what educators call “differentiation” and it’s at the heart of good teaching. Teachers went to college for 5 to 6 years minimum and continue to receive training in how to do this, so unless you’re also a teacher you really can’t be expected to master this. The one advantage that you have is that your “class size” is much smaller, but you’re also trying to manage everything else in your home.

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• What to do? Choice, enrichment, and projects are often a great way to motivate kids and challenge them appropriately. And we have an opportunity with stay at home learning to allow kids almost unlimited time to explore topics that they’re interested in. And it doesn’t have to be on a computer. One second grader did a research study on how long the ducks in a pond near her house could hold their breath underwater.

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Purpose

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Definition: This answers the child’s question, “Why do I have to learn this?” It’s important that we’re prepared with a truthful answer and that it makes sense to the child. Again, giving them choices in what and how they learn can be a key to self-motivation.

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• Why this may be a problem now: “asynchronous” learning (assignments posted on Google Classroom or Seesaw) does not include live input from a teacher, so there is no opportunity for the teacher to use strategies that connect new learning to previous learning, create context, hear what other students are thinking, etc etc - all of the things that teachers would typically do to provide meaning and purpose to lessons and activities.

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• What to do? Have a conversation with your child about what they’re learning and how it connects to the world, have your child call a classmate to discuss what they’re learning, “connect the dots” with them - see how many connections they can make between what they’re learning and other things or ideas.

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A Final Thought About Motivation

Kids are always motivated. They just aren’t always motivated to do the things that we want them to do! We have to be aware of when our needs and our child’s needs are in conflict.

Tenets of Positive Discipline

Be kind and firm at the same time.

Learning from mistakes should apply to behavior as well.

Connect before you correct.

Children do not develop responsibility in strict or controlling environments.

Children do not develop responsibility in permissive environments.

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Teach self-evaluation instead of praising.

Avoid shaming and blaming.

Don’t ask why after children misbehave. Ask curiosity questions.

Punishment may work in the short run, but fails in the long run.

Do not attempt to discuss behavior with a child while they (or you) are still upset.

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Five Criteria for Positive Discipline With Parenting Expert Dr. Jane Nelsen

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This short video provides a nice overview of Positive Discipline.

https://www.ted.com/talks/yifat_susskind_in_uncertain_times_think_like_a_mother

In uncertain times, think like a mother.

Research on children lying

• The higher their I.Q., the more likely they are to lie.
• Punishing children for lying increases the likelihood of more lying.
• Lying is not a moral deficiency in children, it’s a way that they develop more nuanced language.

The research on disrespectful behavior

• Disrespect is most often an attempt by the child to have power, when feeling less than powerful.
• Reacting to each disrespectful comment actually increases the likelihood of more disrespect.
• Demanding respect is also likely to backfire. Why?

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• So… what do we do about it?

Challenge Success

• 73% of students listed academic stress as their number one reason for using drugs, yet only 7% of parents believe teens might use drugs to deal with stress.