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Jul 2009
Back to School (again)
July 21, 2009 12:00 PM
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Dear Dr. Fournier: My mom sat me down and made me write to you for advice. Everyone keeps asking me, “Are you ready to go back to school?” I'm sick of that dumb question. If I say no, I still have to go back to school. I don’t believe others who say they are ready to go back to school. Why can’t people quit asking this dumb question? Mark D., Huntsville, Ala. |
Dear Mark: You’re right. You don’t have a choice about going back to school, and it is sort of dumb for adults to pester you with this question. But ask yourself why the question seems so dumb. Most likely, it’s dumb to you because it makes you think of all the summer freedoms you must soon give up.
Did you know your parents feel this way sometimes, too? And did you know they get asked dumb questions, as well? How do you think your parents feel when other adults ask them, “Are you looking forward to going back to work after a couple of weeks vacation?”
They feel the same kind of pain you’re feeling when they return from a great vacation and have to go back to work on Monday morning or when they have to cut the lawn, pay the bills or buy groceries.
The Assessment: Mark, the adults who ask you this dumb question about going back to school in a couple of weeks have memories of “good old school days” when they were with friends all day long. It was a time when they were carefree with fewer responsibilities than they have now. These adults have probably also said to you, “When you look back on it Mark, you’ll see these were some of the best days of your life.”
Even stores make use of this selective memory with colorful and happy advertising for “Back to School” items. The items themselves, such as book bags, clothes and shoes, notebooks and other school supplies are uniquely designed and with fresh color combinations to indicate fun and happiness about going back to school.
Yet behind the cute notebook covers and fashionable clothes is you - a person with feelings. Those feelings often get covered up in the back-to-school rush. Emotions and feelings that stay inside are like a volcano in the making. You need to get your feelings out and avoid erupting because lava burns.
What To Do: Going back to school forces you to deal with two opposite emotions at the same time. You feel sad because summer and freedom are over. It’s okay to grieve and feel sad about that. On the other hand, going back to school is a time of anticipation and hope for new and wonderful things.
You may be wondering why must you deal with both emotions.
By concentrating only on what you are losing, your grief for summer overpowers your chance to anticipate all that good that could be gained from returning to school. You need to see the balance between what you lose and what you gain.
Set up a sheet of paper divided into two columns - one for recording “My Losses” and the other for “My Gains.”
“My Losses” could include:
“My Gains” could include:
Take at least one week to fill in your chart, and keep it in a handy place so that, as new things come to you, you can write them down. If possible, discuss your feelings with your parents. They may provide you with some good ideas to include on your list.
Each time you go back to your list, read it thoroughly as if you were reading a book. “My Losses” is simply a chapter that is ending. You can always remember it. “My Gains” is the next chapter that you are about to write. It can be as good as you decide to make it.
As you learn to anticipate, you will learn to let go of the past with less grieving and less anger. This will help you look forward to the next step in life - and the new chapter you are about to write.
Now Mark, when adults ask you this dumb question, you can answer with a response that shows you understand what you are losing as well as what you will be gaining: “I’ll miss getting up late, but I look forward to meeting new friends,” or “I’ll miss playing my games and not having homework, but I look forward to ball games and learning new things.”
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Getting Back to Using Time Wisely
July 14, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels
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Dear Dr. Fournier: It’s mid
July and my daughter is enjoying an unstructured
summer, oblivious of the clock. I am trying to
condition her now for the start of school, which
is actually in just three weeks. To get her back
in the habit of completing a task in a certain
amount of time, or by a certain date, I have
given her tasks to do around the house with
deadlines for when they must be completed. My
daughter has never done well on the “attending to
task” and “done on time” part of her report
cards.
I fear this will be the case again this coming school year. I know she can do the work just fine because we threaten her with punishment, especially spankings and to avoid this, she concentrates on her work and gets it done. Still, it’s been the same these last two weeks with summer tasks around the house. She’s missed a couple of deadlines so I have had to threaten her with punishment. How do I motivate her to work on her own and to initiate work herself? I am worried about the constant negative reinforcement here. Denise R., Hollywood, Fla. |
Dear Denise: Many children have difficulty attending to tasks in school, especially in the early grades. Unfortunately, this leads to teachers and others, including parents, calling them “unmotivated” or “lazy” when they really only have a time management issue. If “attending to task” were a synonym for reading, then the solution would be obvious: Teach the child how to read. So, a child who doesn’t attend to tasks needs to be taught how to do this.
Consider the business executive who spends hundreds of dollars to take a professional seminar on time management. Is he unable to use time wisely? Is he unmotivated? Is he lazy? Is he punished for his deficiency?
The answer to all of the questions is, “No,” Denise. He simply needs to be taught time management skills and as an adult, he has the ability to recognize this and ask for or get help. When an adult recognizes weakness in his work habits, he or she remedies that by learning the necessary strategies to correct the deficiency. Most children cannot do this. And unfortunately, we don’t give children the same latitude in learning work habits as we do adults in the workplace.
If a child’s report card shows, “Needs Improvement” in one of these work habits, parents may resort to punishments or bribes to create motivation. If these don’t work, many parents have their children tested to try and find the source of the problem.
The Assessment: Report cards have two parts. One deals with academic subjects. The other, which causes much pain to family and children, deals with work habits. Those generally are:
These are the skills that schools expect children to innately have. Since these are NOT skills present from birth, I call this “The Innateness Fallacy.”
Denise, when your daughter was a preschooler, how many times did you have her sit in a chair and carry out these instructions?
“You will take out your dolls and play with them. You will color in your coloring book, and color the circles red and the triangles blue.”
Probably never. You just gave her the dolls, the colors and the coloring book and let her do her own thing. You, like many parents, expected your child to do this by herself because much of this type of “work” is instinctive. However, the work habits that are listed on a child’s report card are schoolwork habits that are not instinctive and must be taught.
What To Do: Time and task are the two issues that make children unable to get the assignment done.
Many children are expected to know how to stay on task without knowing how to manage time. Without an understanding of time, a child cannot learn his own working capacity; such as knowing he can do 10 math problems in 10 minutes. Without this knowledge, the task easily overwhelms a child. This leads to fear, and fear takes to daydreaming (procrastination). What seems like a naughty child is really a stressed child who does not know “how.”
So, when school resumes, use homework to teach your daughter to learn her own working capacity by following these five easy steps:
Once the task is complete, stop the timer and show her how long it took. Ask her to write it down so she sees on paper that her three hours turned out to be only five minutes. She will then be able to realize how much she can do in small units of time. You can also do this now with the household tasks you are assigning her by following the same steps.
Next time your child gets a similar task, she will not have to fear it because she knows she can handle it in a certain amount of time. And then Denise, give her a hug that will go a long way.
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Dealing with teachers' sarcasm and ridicule
July 07, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels
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Dear Dr. Fournier: I know it’s only July but school will be starting before we know it and I’m worried about the teachers my son will have as he goes into his 9th grade year. We had a problem with our child last year and it nearly devastated me. He was subjected for most of the school year to a teacher’s sarcasm and ridicule in the classroom even though he tried valiantly to please her and keep this teacher happy. As a result, his self-esteem suffered badly. He withdrew from his friends and us for a while then school was over and he was happy again as summer started. I know he is already dreading the start of school next month for fear of the same thing happening this coming school year. What can we as parents do when our children are subjected to a teacher’s sarcasm and ridicule? Jenny F., New Bern, NC |
Dear Jenny: When people suffer from work-related problems, family disagreements, financial obligations, illness or other life situations, this causes stress. They often seek relief from that stress by taking their frustrations out on others (many times people not even related to the cause of the stress) in the form of sarcasm, ridicule or just plain shouting.
Teachers are also susceptible to stress and as such, often take it out on students in the classroom.
While no situation justifies the use of sarcasm and ridicule, it’s a very human thing to do. Once we recognize this, we can deal with the situation.
The Assessment: Sarcasm and ridicule are inappropriate in the classroom – whether from the teacher or from students. You cannot change their behavior. What you can do is help your child understand reactions to stress and help him learn to cope with them.
This personal strategy is important to your son not just in the classroom but also in life. Yet coping with others is not an innate ability. You must guide your child in recognizing such situations and teach him how to handle them with empathy.
This seemingly passive strategy is frequently dismissed in today’s world where people wear their feelings on their sleeves or walk around with a chip on their shoulder. Parents I counsel on this issue often initially are offended and say to me, “No one has a right to insult my child.”
They are correct.
However, you will not always be there to help your child mend hurt feelings or deal with others. It is far more important to teach your child to take responsibility for his own defense, not by hitting back but by going above it.
I know this will seem foreign to a society where everyone wants to blame others for their troubles but taking responsibility for his life now will equip your son with the ability to deal with setbacks he will likely face as an adult.
So, help your son learn to see opportunity where others see defeat. Help him learn that a key to overcoming hurt is finding ways to collaborate with the hurtful person rather than succumbing to him or her and the natural desire we have to separate from those around us when we are hurting.
Most of all, Jenny, help your child learn that he is strong enough to fend off defeatist feelings with strategies for success.
What To Do: Start by helping your child recall moments when he or she has lost control in dealing with a sister, a brother or a friend because of “outside” stress, such as getting a low grade on a report card or just simply having nothing go right for him that day (what we often call in slang terms as “having a bad hair day.”)
Help your child understand that sometimes a teacher’s actions may be unrelated to him or the person who is on the receiving end of the teacher’s ire. Let your child know this is an opportunity to take positive action in an unpleasant situation. Use role-playing with your child to illustrate things a teacher might say, and teach your child other thoughts.
Start by asking your child to answer three questions:
1. What did the teacher say that shows his or her stress?
2. Why should I not let this bother me?
3. What can I do to let the teacher know I’m moving forward?
Make sure your child gets to Step 3. This is the step that will help the child not stifle bad feelings, and instead take positive steps. Here is an example of the answers in this three-step process:
1. “You could have done better on this test. You obviously didn't study. Your laziness is going to flunk you, not me.”
2. My teacher is frustrated. Her job is to teach so that I learn. My teacher feels bad because he or she didn’t get the job done; besides, maybe she has a headache, or a sick parent or her own child is having problems.
3. For the next test I’ll prepare an outline and ask my teacher to review it with me so she can see and know I’m making an effort.
Finally Jenny, if this approach doesn’t help your son this coming school year with a difficult teacher, then schedule a conference with that teacher to let him or her know the affect it is having on your child’s emotional wellness.
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