When you see the light, but from another perspective.
There's still time to catch some online webinars from this year's TEFOS: The Executive Function Online Summit, organized by education-and-life coach Seth Perler.
If you have a child who's scattered, can't focus, can't ever seem to follow through on tasks . . . a child who melts in frustration or explodes in anger . . . if your whole house feels like chaos or a battleground . . . if the scattered unfocused non-follow-through explosive child is you . . . then you might find some insights among the speakers at this online conference.
I'm going to share here the extensive notes I took at last year's TEFOS, from a webinar by executive-function coach Yulia Rafailova. This was the only event I managed to catch last year, but as it turned out, it was the precise thing I needed to catch. The talk was, as the title linked via Yulia's name indicates, about "parenting like an executive-function coach," and focused on establishing systems within the family to support, rather than thwart, a struggling child.
These are my notes more or less as I typed them on my phone:
3 main areas to focus on for a parent (***for yourself first***, then for your student):
1. Emotional regulation/impulse control
2. Working memory/juggling details, being able to follow a sequence of information in your mind to complete a task
3. Cognitive flexibility: being able to think about something from different perspectives, having a Plan B and Plan C in mind in case your Plan A doesn't work out (instead of being stuck on Plan A, then lost when it doesn't work)
She emphasizes how important it is for YOU, the parent, to work on yourself in these areas, especially if you struggle with them. There's a helpful assessment on her site to encourage self-awareness: what you're good at, where you need to grow.
Throughout, she stresses how important #1 is – that if YOU are good at emotional self-regulation, so much else will fall into place.
What this basically means is that you are able to remain calm – really calm, not just fake calm but seething inside – when your child is not.
Your aim is to "hold a safe space" for your child, who will naturally "co-regulate" with you. You know how babies will calm because their pulse will align with their mother's when their mother holds them –well, this doesn't go away. Your child is attuned to your emotional state. If you are calm, your child will start to calm down. If you are all freaked out, your child will co-regulate to that, too.
So she keeps emphasizing how this is THE thing – to learn to respond calmly to your child (or anyone, or any situation) rather than reacting with some big knee-jerk emotional response.
This is the kind of thing Greg Popcak talks a lot about, too. And yes, it is hard – building any new habit is hard, and this one requires you really to look at yourself, your own triggers and emotional temperature.
So you ask yourself things like, "What's my emotional temp right now, while I'm talking to my child? WHY is it going up? What can I do to take it down again?"
And you can verbalize that – it's okay to let your child know that your temperature is rising (in ways other than just blowing up at them, or snapping at them, or shutting them down/dismissing them, or whatever you might normally do as a knee-jerk emotional reaction). And you can say, "I want to keep talking, but I need to step out of the room and calm down a minute so that I can talk and listen better."
So it's okay not to be the model of perfect calm all the time – and a great model for your child to see you deal *constructively* with anger, frustration, or whatever it is you're feeling. This is how your child learns to be an emotionally functional person, by seeing you be imperfect but focused on good communication.
I can do this better with some of my children than with others.
The hard thing is identifying what exactly is triggering your response –is it fear of losing control over the situation (would it be a disaster if you did lose control over the situation)? Is it anxiety about your parenting, or about yourself as possibly a failure, and here's one more way you've failed? Is it frustration because you're focused on the idea that everybody just has to do what you say, regardless of how you've said it, or whether it was clear to them? Is it just overwhelm – maybe because you don't have a Plan B or Plan C to fall back on when Plan A doesn't fly? Or because you haven't really thought through the day very clearly . . . ?
The more you can see where your emotional responses are coming from, the more you can address whatever it is – whether it's your own mother's critical voice in your ear (or some other Desolation), or whether it's because actually you yourself aren't clear what the plan is, and in your heart of hearts you know this . . . In any instance, there are solutions you can seek, but it's good to know what the problem is so that you hit on the right solution.
Also, re the idea that this is hard – one thing Yulia says is that so often she works with parents who struggle with emotional self-regulation, and they'll say things like, "But she was just having this tantrum, and she wouldn't stop, and it was stressing me out, and I just couldn't help it . . . " ie losing their cool.
And she says, "So, you're expecting your child to be able to do something you actually can't do yourself?"
(Which, I mean, probably we're all busted here, at least a little bit, at least sometimes.)
But again, the point is: get to "good enough." Not perfect. The more you can work on yourself in this area, and see improvement, the more your child will co-regulate to the calmer you, and you will see improvement there, as well.
So, implementation of strategies:
*Develop self-awareness: what behavior am I modeling?
My child is going to learn from me, regardless of what behavior I am modeling. They will do what I do, not what I say.
Do I have emotional self-regulation?
I need to learn to pay attention to my own emotions, articulate to myself what I am feeling – and maybe articulate that to my child: "I'm feeling stressed out/angry right now. I need to take a break"
*Create an emotionally safe space for myself and my child:
It is OK to have emotions
No emotion is "bad"
There is ***nothing wrong**** with me or my child for having a "negative" emotion like anger, dislike of something, anxiety, etc.
*From a calm place, you can
1. Acknowledge the emotion your child is having – "You feel angry/I can see you don't like this," etc, without judgment
2. But also say, "There are better ways to communicate how we feel than (yelling, throwing things, sulking, etc)"
Model dealing with things, talking about problems
*Stop talking and listen
So many children say, "My parents just don't get it," ie what's going on with me
Make yourself ask questions, and restrain yourself from jumping in with answers or speaking for your child. Instead say, "Tell me more."
Get the child to talk, and make it safe for him/her to talk to you
She suggests asking, "If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about me (your parent), what would you change" – this is a scary question to ask, but ask it, and LISTEN – restrain yourself from being defensive, jumping in
Again, developing calm energy (or whatever you want to call it) –work HARD at learning to radiate calm
Again, co-regulation. If you're not calm, be honest about your need to take a break and go calm down – this is teaching the child a good self-regulating behavior, rather than just being stuck in conflict
There's a difference between being calm and being withdrawn or disconnected
Know your default mode – for example, are you avoidant as a default (just naturally go out of your way to avoid conflict by withdrawing or shutting down) –so that in a crisis moment you are self-aware enough to pull yourself out of that default mode and be present to your child
Another huge factor: ability to plan
If you can't plan (as in plan your life, organize), then often managing your family becomes overwhelming, leads to emotional dysregulation in you and everyone else.
Good planning = your home/life is not chaotic or distracting (NOT "your home/life is perfect." Good enough is good enough, but minimizing chaos and distractions is important, especially if you have a child who struggles, or you yourself struggle, with executive function).
Doesn't matter what method you use to organize – what works for one person doesn't work for another. What is important is to find a way to organize your life so that your family can function (especially important when your home is also your learning environment – Charlotte Mason would say: "Education is an Atmosphere," which is my note, not Yulia's!)
Arrange life so that people have what they need to accomplish tasks (in my house, this looks like: pencils and pens and notebook paper/notebooks in a rack by our kitchen table, for geometry first thing in the morning; it looks like books shelved by subject so that we can find them in the den)
Get rid of stuff you don't need, so that you can find and find places for stuff you do need
Anticipate whatever life might throw you – plan further ahead than you think you need to
My planning/organizing system might not work for my child. Let child come up with his/her own planning/organizing system
Flexible thinking/planning/problem-solving, aka cognitive flexibility:
Have a Plan B, a Plan C – that way you aren't left hanging when Plan A doesn't work, and you are more able to go with the flow
Example (boy, is this so last year):
I direct our parish choir, though I am not really a musician. My MO is to have a plan – this introit, that hymn, that psalm, that offertory proper, that offertory hymn, etc. BUT I might be the only person who shows up. I always have a plan for when that happens – I'll just sing chant and ditch the hymns, and that way the music doesn't sound pathetic. This lowers my stress levels no end, and means that music happens, and sounds like it was meant to happen the way it's happening, instead of a crash and burn.
(you can see the applicability of all this to homeschooling, I hope!)
Communication:
Effective communication=your child can follow through on tasks (because you've made them clearly understandable and doable, communicating whatever steps those tasks involve)
Effective communication=your child will come to you to talk about difficult things
Again, understand your default mode (avoidance, etc) and how that might affect how you communicate with your child. Self-awareness means you can change the script -- you know what you've been doing, so you can consciously change (make yourself more present, restrain yourself from lecturing or overriding what the child has to say, keep from blowing your top)
So much communication is subconscious. Kids can sense when you have an agenda – so if you have one, be aware of that, and be honest with your child about it. Don't be manipulative!
**Your own self-talk communicates itself to your child** If you are massively self-critical, then your child will intuit and absorb this as his/her own mode of self-talk
Quality time is important: even a few minutes one on one with a child where he/she feels seen, heard, loved
Aim for ratio of 3 positive to 1 negative interaction with each child
Other stuff:
Self-care: as my confessor has said to me many times, you can't give what you don't have. Might seem selfish to have pursuits of your own, or to take time for yourself, but you will burn out if you don't treat yourself like a person
Also, you have to deal with yourself in terms of things like emotional regulation, mental health, and so on. It is tempting to put yourself on the back burner, but DON'T.
Micromanagement: don't encourage learned helplessness by doing everything for your children (this backfires on you – then you end up doing everything and being a martyr, which is bad for everybody)
Do fewer things; streamline your life; help your children develop competencies -- they feel good being able to do things, and the whole burden of running the show doesn't devolve on you forever.
Create processes for dealing with problems, especially recurring ones.
Developing the mindset of a coach
(ie somebody like Yulia or Seth, whom you would pay to work with your family -- there ARE things you can do for yourself for free):
Look at problems as opportunities to have fun solving – not things you have to FIX, oh no oh no, or be shamed or afraid about –
classic example would be your child's messy room. NOT something to be ashamed of, or to shame your child about, or be embarrassed for everyone to see. Instead, challenge to organize, and evidence of the cool person your child is. Yes, there's stuff all over his floor, but what IS that stuff? What does that tell you about him as a person?
Understand resistance (in your child) as fear of leaving a comfort zone. It's not rebellion, or self-will – it's anxiety. So how do you gently stretch beyond those confines? Again, a challenge to find solutions, not a broken thing to fix.
Action: download the parent assessment and take it, and be honest with yourself. Understand your default patterns.
In situations with your child, think back to that assessment and try to change your default patterns so that you can move past being stuck.
Rewire your own habits of behavior
Own your feelings around problems or situations, model for your child what this looks like ("You know, I really hate doing this. I'm feeling really anxious/stressed/angry")
Practice being uncomfortable without reacting (as when your child is trying to say something to you that suggests that maybe you haven't done the right thing in a situation . . . )
Pay attention to your own internal communication – is the voice inside you the voice of a critic? Learn not to believe your inner critic uncritically – push back. And say to yourself, "Oh, that's just my inner critic, I don't have to listen to him/her."
(My husband suggests that this is really hard work – that often these inner voices are the result of spiritual wounds received in childhood, and that it takes prayer, as well as psychology, to heal them – he has been very much a fan of Dr. Bob Schuchts and the JPII Healing Center . . . so these guys doing this webinar are secular, but not wrong. Just not necessarily touching the spiritual aspect of some of these things in ourselves)
They suggest replacing your inner critic with an inner coach – a hero figure. When your inner critic starts talking, ask yourself what your inner coach would say instead.
Ask yourself what you are PROUD of having done in the past as a parent. So often we beat ourselves up for our mistakes. But look for the things you really feel you did right. Visualizing a brighter past helps you visualize a brighter future.
The one thing you have any control over is yourself.
In conclusion, I really think that all of this speaks to questions homeschooling parents about discipline and motivation – how do you get a child to do what he needs to do, especially when Charlotte Mason says don't bribe, plead, threaten, coerce, or manipulate somebody into doing something.
That is really what all of this is talking about. The upshot is that if you can attune to your child as a person – and especially if you can get your child to co-regulate with you to a calm place – so much really does fall into place. You can work together in an honest and healthy way to achieve what needs to be done.
Also, the other thing Yulia kept stressing? "Good enough." Not "perfect." If you can get to "good enough," then truly, that's good enough.
This year's TEFOS featured, again, a huge array of speakers, many of whom have written books as well. I will provide a booklist in a separate post, for anyone who might be interested in further reading.
And I do recommend Yulia's site, MindfullEducation.com.