Love Learning

Self-Motivation: The Root of Success Against All Odds

Several years ago in a school where I worked with Title 1 children (failing in school, but not qualifying for special education), I came to know one particular 7th grade boy pretty well. Tom had a sweet personality, seemed smart, and stayed out of trouble, but was completely lacking in motivation to do his work. His very frustrated and discouraged parents had seen him go in and then out of a special education program early in his elementary years, but in spite of testing out of special education, his performance remained terrible – chalk it up to “laziness.” Many adults did.

Tom quietly insisted that he didn’t NEED to do well in school. His desire in life was to be the manager at Burger King, and he was smart enough to know that if he remained adamant on this plan for his life, no adult would be able to show him a reason to perform well in school.

It is nearly impossible for me to accept that something cannot be fixed or made better, so one day I invited Tom into my office to talk. I earnestly shared with him that I knew he was smart. Tom shrugged politely. I persisted, asking him question after question and making plea after plea. Tom finally began to talk and shared with me that being in special education had convinced him that he is not smart enough to do anything really important. It sucked him dry of motivation. I, of course, said that he could do anything he would set his mind to, but he had to try harder than he was. He smiled and shared with me as he had done many times before, that he was satisfied; he was going to manage a Burger King restaurant and was not really going to need college anyway. I suspected Tom was resorting to this career to get people like me off his back. Stubbornly, I told him that I just couldn’t believe he would aspire to this job as the most exciting thing he could imagine to do with his life. He insisted it was. We went back and forth like this for a while getting absolutely nowhere.

Finally, in desperation I asked, “Tom, if you could erase from your mind anything anyone has ever told you, if you could imagine the most perfect thing to do, that would be the most interesting – if there were no obstacles at all to your doing this thing, if you could wave a magic wand and make it happen, what would it be?” Much to my surprise, Tom’s complacency vanished. He sat up straighter in his chair and asked, “ANYTHING?” Without any hesitation, Tom said he would choose to work in Asia in some field involving cutting edge technology.

BINGO! There was his answer and it was super specific. Finally I could see the dream Tom had buried under the years of failure and adult displeasure. “Tom, you can totally do this,” I flatly stated. “You will have to get a college degree, though. And getting into college means you are going to have to start making decent grades now. But I will do everything I can to help you.”

I’ve never witnessed a more dramatic change in a person in my life. Tom turned on a dime. He not only began to study, but he did his homework, contributed in class, asked questions, and began to make good grades. None of these behaviors can be forced on a child; they have to flow straight from the heart in the service of something that child truly wants. As days passed, I still struggled to catch up with the incredible change in Tom. He was transformed from the polite but slouchy sleepy-eyed boy I’d come to know and care for into a boy who was alert and more energetic. He had a purpose for being at school.

In the meantime, my attention had been caught by Tony, a 5th grader who got thrown out of class nearly every day. Tony was failing, defiant, always getting into trouble, and was spending way too much time in the office. His teacher said he was sick of dealing with him, was tired of Tony ruining class for everyone else.  So one day when Tom arrived early for our session in math, I impulsively shared with him that there was a boy in 5th grade that needed help. Would he be willing to spend time with him? Would he invest some of his free time in tutoring Tony in math and then become his friend and find out what he really wanted in life? Tom quickly agreed. I cleared this for Tom and Tony with the administration and with their teachers. Honestly, they were willing to agree to ANYTHING, especially if it involved someone doing something about Tony! I promised to supervise the duo. So Tom began to tutor Tony; he was patient and earnest in explaining math concepts to Tony. I could overhear some of their conversations. Tom was already passing on to Tony his advice about staying out of trouble. Coming from an older student, the advice was well received.

Self-motivation will flow out of a desire that resides deep in the heart of a child. It is worth everything to help him find that desire, and then give him the freedom to go for it.

Eli Makes Cookies: Baking with a Toddler

Eli Makes Cookies portrays a grandmother lovingly introducing her very young grandson to the art of baking, encouraging him to explore ingredients while showing him how to use kitchen tools appropriately. This book models kindness.

Another book about exploration by Jeanette Gray and Elizabeth Gray Earl, Eli Makes Cookies takes place in Eli's grandmother's kitchen. The book portrays a very tactile experience, showing Eli touching sticky dough, tasting sour cream and working with cookie cutters.

What I especially love about Eli Makes Cookies is that Eli's grandmother doesn't hover at all, but lets Eli try things that could result in a mess, for the sake of his development and the experience. For instance, she lets him carry eggs and pour sugar, two things with the potential to cause a whole lot of clean-up. Eli's grandmother is able to look past what is convenient or standard practice to do what is actually best for her very young and very curious grandson. Throughout it all, though, she provides the support and help that Eli needs in order to succeed when trying those new skills (while letting him carry eggs, for example, she has one hand on the box for support). Talk about the opposite of helicopter parenting! 

There's also a yummy sugar cookie recipe in the back of the book to encourage parents to bake with their own children after reading it.

Essentially, Eli Makes Cookies is a very sweet book about a shared baking experience between a curious toddler and his loving grandmother.

--DLG

Eli Hears Music: Tuning in to Sound

In Eli Hears Music, a young boy hears a bird’s song, mimics it, and then tunes in to other sounds and rhythms around him. Inspired to hear more, he begins to create music with objects and musical instruments that are part of his daily life.

What I love about this book is that it shows a young child actively learning all about the various sounds in his environment­­. Some occur naturally such as the song of a bird and a train whistle and some he  creates on his own using things he finds in his house. I love that the book shows Eli actually creating sound using a variety of implements – everything from a real organ to wooden spoons to the tang of a rubber band stretched around a wooden frame.

Compare his experience of hearing and making music to that of a child watching a hypothetical TV program called “Sounds All Around.”  While watching the TV program a passive child looks at activities that are directed and executed by someone else,  whereas Eli Hears Music portrays a child fully engaged in real, hands-on and unforgettable experiences.

Poor Executive Function or ADHD? Can We Tell the Difference?

I think as we view any topic this weighty, it is helpful to achieve balance by looking at many factors at one time, factors that have a serious impact on the discussion. Many people question the frequency of diagnosis of ADHD – does the child really have problems in his brain functioning, or could it be that life experience has contributed to his inability to control himself and remain focused? It is not a coincidence that the rise in ADHD diagnoses coincides with the withering of old-fashioned free play, and with the explosion of electronic media as play and entertainment for children. There is also no mistaking the fact that the new hot topic in education, executive function, deals with the issues of self-regulation, self-control, self-discipline, and impulse control-- all skills that can be taught. From my point of view, several inter-related factors impact children and the way they develop. This is how I see the relationship between the various occurrences:

The Role of Free Play in Building Executive Function

Check out this article from NPR entitled “Creative Play Makes for Kids in Control.” The setting is an early childhood center in New Jersey. The basis for all that is done in the school has to do with teaching and reinforcing executive function skills in the enrolled children. The article cites the loss of free play as a major factor in the loss of executive functioning in children.

“For most of human history, children played by roaming near or far in packs large and small. Younger children were supervised by older children and engaged in freewheeling imaginative play. They were pirates and princesses, aristocrats and heroes.

“But, while all that play might have looked a lot like time spent doing nothing much at all, it actually helped build a critical cognitive skill called executive function. Executive function has a number of elements, such as working memory and cognitive flexibility. But perhaps the most important is self-regulation — the ability for kids to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline. Executive function — and its self-regulation element — is important. Poor executive function is associated with high dropout rates, drug use and crime. In fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's IQ.”

Two things stand out to me from this quote: one, that free play helps develops the critical skill called "executive function" and that the lack of it can have such devastating lifelong consequences.

The NPR article ends with this statement: “She [Adele Diamond, executive function researcher] and several other researchers argue that children's reduced self-regulation skills may be showing up in the numbers of kids diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

‘I think a lot of kids get diagnosed with ADHD now, not all but many just because they never learned how to exercise self-control, self-regulation, the executive functions early,’ she says.”

That pretty much sums up the connection between executive function and ADHD-like symptoms: children who never learned to self-regulate will exhibit traits that look very similar to those of ADHD and may be one cause in the increased number of ADHD diagnoses.

The Role of Electronic Media as Entertainment

Along with diminishing free play and executive function, a big factor to consider on the increasing diagnoses of ADHD is an increase in electronic media. I cannot emphasize enough the harm we are doing our children by letting them use so much electronic media for entertainment and also increasingly for school. The reason this habit is so costly is borne out in the stunted development of thousands upon thousands of children in our country today. At the very time in which their outdoor free play was limited, what took the place of this valuable developmental play time was electronic media which renders the child passive and prone to acting on impulse (after all that is how you win most computer games – you act quickly without stopping to consider). Images shifting so quickly train a brain to be ADD-like and inhibit growth of the all important executive function.

This topic weighs so heavily on my heart and just writing about it pains me. In my global mind’s eye I see a vast map of our United States, and the thousands upon thousands of children who are being reared in an environment that goes counter to the way they were designed to develop naturally. I see kids being medicated in order to bring their behaviors under control. I see them being labeled, failing, and yet their days continuing to be filled with more of what caused them harm in the beginning.

What does an environment look like that will result in healthy development?

What makes me saddest is that we have strayed so far away from what a child needs for good development that most of the time we don’t even know what a good environment looks like. It is this reason that motivated us to deviate from our regular line of teaching and learning resources to publish the new series, Eli’s Books. We know that it is critical to be able to show using pictures what healthy child development looks like. I believe that this early preparation is fundamental to success not only in school but in life. Eli’s Books portray what it looks like when a child performs actions that grow his brain and instill executive functioning skills, and also how he learns to have good relationships with others.

Eli’s Winter Day: Hands-on Science for Toddlers

At first glance, Eli’s Winter Day looks like what it is: a book about a really wonderful winter day full of great outdoor family activities that anyone would enjoy after receiving a generous snowfall. However, because my mind is so frequently occupied with what is going on with a child’s brain and how his experiences mold that brain, it suddenly hit me that there is a lot going on in this book we might not notice at first.

Science in the Classroom

I remember well squeezing science into the school day around the all-important focus on reading. While I did my best to locate hands-on experiences for science for my kids, frequently science lessons came out of a book and were pretty standard fare. Take the states of matter for example. Kindergarten standard 3.4 (PA) for physical science states: “Recognize that matter can change from one state to another.” The recommended activities include “Sort and classify common classroom materials or household items by solid, liquid or gas.”and “Conduct an experiment to convert different common liquids into solids by freezing them and recording results, such as, how long it took to change each substance from a liquid to a solid.” A typical way to get this standard covered might be to march the class to the school kitchen, take an ice cube tray, fill it with water, pop it into the freezer and come back the next day to find, eureka! that we have ice! What is even more engaging is to use juice and freeze it into icy pops for the kids to enjoy.

Science Firsthand

In Eli’s Winter Day, however, no one was discussing what happens when water gets cold. Eli was living it! He saw the snow fall, smelled it, ate it, crunched through it with his dino-rubber boots, lay in it, slid through it, packed it into snowballs, shoveled it, made tracks, and built a really great snowman. He felt its cold. Then he found an icicle and experienced the difference between the softness of the snow and the hefty, slickery icicle as he held it in his bare hands. He could see the drips melting off the end of the icicle.  Walking by the river showed him water in its original state. Eli’s whole being was immersed in the question of the various states of water.

Do We Need to Teach it?

I think a common unrecognized belief among parents and teachers is that unless we organize the material we want a child to learn, and unless we verbalize it, pointing out significant aspects of the experience, the child won’t learn it. But the really amazing thing about a child’s brain is that it is designed to take in data from the environment through the senses. Next it organizes all that random data and even if no one says a word (such as “states of matter”) even an 18 month old is capable of storing up a wealth of rich information about his world if he is given the opportunity to go out and experience it firsthand. In a perfect world, all our school topics would be taught from firsthand experience just like in this book.

The beauty of this book, like in the other Eli titles, is that we can see what it looks like when a toddler is experiencing something that will teach him richly and grow his brain and body in healthy ways.

Facilitating Learning

I remember in grad school being asked the question, “What is teaching, and what is learning?” I was a bit puzzled because I still thought pretty traditionally about the process of imparting learning to kids. I thought if I was a good teacher, I would do a superior job of “covering the material” we needed to teach the kids, I would organize it well, even teach to the modalities. What I didn’t really understand was that my most valuable contribution to my students would come in the form of providing them with firsthand experiences such as the ones modeled for us in Eli’s Books. The brain of a child is naturally ready to learn and will learn if conditions are right. The most difficult challenge about being a classroom teacher who is truly a facilitator of learning is that we are typically greatly limited in how many real life experiences we can offer our students. At home it is a totally different story. Parents can offer their children this type of rich opportunity to learn about the world firsthand. And hey! It’s summer! Not a great time for firsthand learning about the states of water, but it is a great time to learn about life cycles of plants and plant parts. Give your child a bean, a pot of soil and let him figure out biological sciences standard  (PA) 3.3 hands-on. “Identify the life processes of living things.” “Identify the basic needs necessary for plants and animals to survive.” “Document by drawing changes over time of trees or plants.” “Recognize from illustrations the process (sequence) of changes in some living things (butterfly, frog, plants from bulbs or seeds).”

Eli Meets His Shadow: An hour in the park: a super-effective way to build neural pathways and prepare the brain for learning

One of today’s hot topics is just how much “protection” children need as they grow and develop. Many new mothers are terrified of germs that lurk on the floor and on surfaces outdoors. Even schools are beginning to respond to demands from parents to keep their children free from germs. Playgrounds are all synthetic now – rubber coated ground will not only keep Frankie clean, but if he should fall, there will be no injury.

At home, children are protected from germ and injury by being kept in containers pretty much around the clock: crib, stroller, playpen, carrier, car seat, just add to the list. While using containers to keep babies and toddlers safe might prevent the parent from anxiety about their child’s safety, the real tragedy in the situation is that as a result of being containerized, so much is NOT happening for the child in terms of healthy brain development.

WHAT?

The Role of Overprotection

Yes, most certainly. All this overprotection is actually hurting children by preventing healthy brain growth. According to many experts and researchers, while every child is born with an enormous potential for learning and growth, the brain is also smart enough to realize which brain cells are not being used and allows those cells to die off!

Judith Graham, extension human development specialist, says the following: “A brain is not a computer. The brain begins working long before it is finished. And the same processes that wire the brain before birth also drive the very rapid growth of learning that occurs immediately after birth. At birth, a baby’s brain contains 100 billion neurons, roughly as many nerve cells as there are stars in the Milky Way. Before birth, the brain produces trillions more neurons and 'synapses' (connections between the brain cells) than needed. During the first years of life, the brain undergoes a series of extraordinary changes. Then, through a process that resembles Darwinian competition, the brain eliminates connections that are seldom or never used.”

The Best Way to Grow a Child’s Brain

If you want the technical details about this topic, read Carla Hannaford’s book Smart Moves. The book thoroughly explains what happens in your child’s brain as a result of activity or no activity. The book also explains the role of outside play and exploration, of active play, of stress, of lack of sufficient relationship with parents, and so much more.

Basically, however, what she and other experts say is that children must be encouraged to move, to play outside, to experiment with how their bodies move in space, over objects, and how they balance.

Eli Meets His Shadow shows in perfect clarity a situation in which all is going well for a small child. He suggests an outing at the park and Mom agrees, so off they go. While the book is about Eli discovering his shadow and playing with it throughout the time they are at the park, what I notice is all the various types of brain-building activities Eli is enjoying. And I love it that while Mom is right there, she’s not hovering nor is she shrieking “Be careful! Get down! You’re too little! Let me hold your hand so you won’t fall!”

Eli climbs, slides, spins, climbs some more, swings, turns wheels, balances on beams, kicks a ball, crawls, and of course presumably runs around. In addition to the hugely beneficial effects of such movement on the brain and its connections, Eli also has the opportunity to discover what happens when you blow bubbles in the air. Do they fall directly to the ground? How long exactly do they stay in the air before crashing or just fading away? He also learns firsthand the peculiar behaviors of shadows. First they are by me, then in front, now very short, whoops! now very long! Now where did he go?

I honestly think that it is impossible to count how many neural connections were made during that one jaunt to the park, but I would venture to say that the benefits to Eli were incalculable. One of the richest of benefits is the time he spent with Mom enjoying the experience. For a very young child, the time spent sharing an experience with a parent is immeasurable.

Once again, the authors have gently shown us with simple words and awesome photos, what it looks like when a child is receiving maximum opportunities for maximum development. They also show what a very young child is capable of doing all on his own – safely.

Eli Meet His Shadow, words by Jeanette Gray and photos by Elizabeth Gray Earl,  is now on sale through Child1st Publications.

Eli’s Cross Day

I just love Eli’s Cross Day because I feel like I am really there seeing a real little boy having a very normal day. And his parents do such a great job of being parents in the situation! They strike a perfect balance between letting their child be cranky (we all wake up cranky from time to time, don’t we?) and not letting the mood get the best of him. I also love how Eli is given great opportunities to help Dad and learn how to work outside, encouraging his sense of being a vital part of the family.

What is central in Eli’s Cross Day is that the parents are obviously there, but they are not the dominant characters in the story. They speak little, but when they do, it counts. When Eli decides to do something he’s not supposed to do, they quietly let him enjoy the consequences of his choice in such a way that Eli is able to learn important lessons and think through whether or not he will continue down his given pathway.

Considering the fact that Eli wasn’t yet two years old in this story, a lot is going on in this book that is super important. All too frequently children this age are either overprotected, overindulged, or micromanaged. The assumption is that they are too young to know better. That they are too unformed to be able to really consider their ways and choose a path to take. That they are acting out because they are two and when they grow chronologically older, they will suddenly “know better.” I have seen children suffer from being over-managed by parents who couldn’t let them make any choices for themselves. On the flip side, I’ve also seen so many children suffer because their parents were unable to set good, loving boundaries that would guide them into making good choices for themselves. For a child to develop to her fullest potential, there must be a balance between micromanaging and too little parenting. To strike that balance as a parent is difficult, but it is definitely a good goal to keep in mind as you make decisions along the way.

And the enormous value to the child whose parents are able to find this balance cannot be overstated. At the root of good decision making, good choices, and wise living is the ability to reason, imagine outcomes, and to act based on thought rather than impulse. So many of our children today suffer from the inability to do these things. They are impulsive, don’t seem to be able to visualize consequences to their choices, and have trouble evaluating situations and making wise choices. Some don’t seem to learn from their mistakes.

I’ve worked with many children who struggled in school, and the older I got, the more I became convinced that often it was not an inability to learn that plagued these children, but rather the lack of some basic life skills that hindered their success in school. As a mother of adult children, an educator, and someone who cares very much about the quality of life our children enjoy, I see this book as vitally important because it shows very simply what our children need from us as parents if they are going to grow up to be kids who choose well and therefore live well.

Eli's Cross Day: story by Jeanette Gray, photos by Elizabeth Gray Earl

Eli’s Books & Preparing the Brain to Learn

There’s a brand new series just coming off the press– picture books that seek to show rather than tell how we as parents can provide an enriched environment for our children from birth on up. In this day of jump starts for babies (Baby Einstein, for example) Eli’s Books, by Jeanette Gray & Elizabeth Gray Earl, come as a welcome respite from the emphasis on teaching toddlers facts that will help them get ahead in school. The enrichment I refer to has to do with developing the child, body, mind, and spirit in ways that will lead to excellence for all of life. It involves not just book learning, but whole-person development.

Commonly-Held Notions That Just Aren’t Spot on

I am qualified to write about this since I have twice been a new mother. I remember well my attitudes and thought processes when my babies were in the crib and later beginning to toddle around the house. I frequently assumed an attitude of waiting. Waiting until he can talk. Waiting until she can walk. Waiting for naptime. Waiting for bedtime! Waiting until kindergarten or preschool to arrive. Here are some commonly held ideas that we as parents probably could stand to revisit:

• Significant learning begins with enrollment in school

• Naptime is a way to keep him occupied so I can get something done

• As is bedtime

• Play is another way to keep her occupied so I can get something done

• Outdoor play is a bit more dangerous; dangers lurk in the form of ticks, mosquitoes, rabid squirrels, nails inadvertently dropped into the grass, sunburn, skinned knees, a fall from the slide, a kick in the shin from a “friend” at play

• Daycare or preschool are the only places for acquiring social skills because that’s where peers are found

• Sesame Street and other programs will give my child the jump-start he needs

• Reading books will provide all the exposure my child needs (safely)

• Significant development starts when my child can make conversation

• Activities such as baking are too advanced to involve my preschooler in and are way too messy!

• Development of the brain really is mostly about learning stuff in school

• The biggest value in outdoor play is that my child will get some exercise and fresh air (“fresh” depending of course on where you live)

So along come Eli’s Books and they beautifully illustrate activities that create really important opportunities for behind the scenes development of brain and body, mind and spirit.

What’s Going on Behind the Scenes?

So much is going on inside a tiny baby even before birth that starts the process of brain development which not only impacts performance in school, but most importantly, impacts the direction his life will take. WOW! How can this be? Again I am going to push you towards getting a copy of Carla Hannaford’s book Smart Moves because I am SO tempted to start typing out lengthy quotes from her book. If you’re going to read that much, you might as well read her and not me! After all, she’s the recognized expert on neurophysiology as it relates to education and the development of the child. Here are some important ideas taken from the book:

• “Thought, creativity and learning arise from experience. As we experience, we bring in information and build the neural networks that allow us to use that information so we may better understand the world and how to thrive in it. A major component of experience is sensory input from our environment via our eyes, ears, taste buds, nose and skin; and from our bodies via nerve receptors on each muscle and organ.” (29- 30).

• “Our whole body is designed as a fine tuned sensory receptor for collecting information.” (page 30)

• “Our sensory apparatus is so vital to learning that it begins developing within a couple of months after conception, in utero.” (30)

• “The first sensory system to fully develop and myelinate by five months after conception is the vestibular system, which controls the sense of movement and balance.” (33)

• “The vestibular system is already visible in a two month old embryo. There is much   activation of the head as the fetus moves in the amniotic fluid, then as the child goes from early movements and crawling to walking and running. The stimulation from these movements is crucial to brain development.” (35)

• “Whenever touch is combined with the other senses, much more of the brain is activated, thus building more complex nerve networks and tapping into more learning potential.” (41)

• “In a three dimensional environment, such as outdoors, the eye is in constant motion gathering sensory information to build intricate image packages necessary for learning. The brain integrates these image packages with other sensory information like touch and Proprioception to build a visual perceptual system.” (47)

What Does All This Really Mean?

I wish I’d read this book when my kids were babies; only it was not written yet. During the years  when I was being a good mommy according to the light I had, (but also was marking time until they got big enough to “learn”) I wish I had appreciated how critical certain experiences are for good brain development. Outside free play in which the child is experiencing many different textures, colors, smells, sensations, in which he can run, jump, climb, roll, and even fall down and maybe even bleed and need stitches – all this combines to create a rich background for brain development and for neural growth. Movements such as these connect various areas in the brain and establish neural pathways that will enhance learning. Most importantly, movement and the sensory experiences we described will encourage the development of the frontal lobe and its communication with the other parts of the brain. The frontal lobe is the center for complex thought, for weighing options, for body control, for reasoning. Pretty much this is the area that will help a child grow to be a person who thinks before he acts, who can reason, make informed choices, and so forth. This lobe controls fine motor coordination, simultaneous processing of information, and high level planning.

Eli’s Books are an easy read. (Smile). They show parents providing rich opportunities for their child   to experience nature first hand, to enjoy family activities usually considered “too old” for toddlers, to discover the properties of objects in the environment, and for learning from events that will lead to making wise choices. All the things that really matter in educating a child happen outside of memorization of facts in the classroom. To do well in school and in life, kids must know how to think, how to discover, how to evaluate, how to act with care. They need to learn perseverance, responsibility, honesty and all the traits that will make them into people who take full advantage of what school and then life have to offer.

It's a Knotty Question

“Over the last few years, a new buzz phrase has emerged among scholars and scientists who study early-childhood development, a phrase that sounds more as if it belongs in the boardroom than the classroom: executive function. Originally a neuroscience term, it refers to the ability to think straight: to order your thoughts, to process information in a coherent way, to hold relevant details in your short-term memory, to avoid distractions and mental traps and focus on the task in front of you. And recently, cognitive psychologists have come to believe that executive function, and specifically the skill of self-regulation, might hold the answers to some of the most vexing questions in education today.”

[September 27, 2009, New York Times Magazine, Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control?  By PAUL TOUGH]

Mixed emotions

Seems lately I’ve been getting my brain fizzes from reading what others are saying in the newspaper. This article stopped me in my tracks. I had such mixed emotions as I read. Part of me was silently yelling HUZZAH and the other part was sad and horrified.

Recently, I have been hearing people talk a lot about executive function, and to tell the truth, several months ago I had to ask to what they referred. When I heard the answer, I was speechless. That’s all it is? Self-regulation? Years ago, we said “self-control” in reference to something quite similar. Both require the ability to go beyond what our emotions dictate at that moment, pause to think through the situation, visualize outcomes of either this choice or that one, and then to delay gratification long enough to see a desired outcome materialize. While all these skills make for a socially adept person, those same skills take a child far in the classroom as well.

That notion’s been around for a while

A decade ago I read and thoroughly enjoyed Daniel Goleman’s (1995) book Emotional Intelligence. Read the following book review from Amazon:

“There was a time when IQ was considered the leading determinant of success. In this fascinating book, based on brain and behavioral research, Daniel Goleman argues that our IQ-idolizing view of intelligence is far too narrow. Instead, Goleman makes the case for "emotional intelligence" being the strongest indicator of human success. He defines emotional intelligence in terms of self-awareness, altruism, personal motivation, empathy, and the ability to love and be loved by friends, partners, and family members. People who possess high emotional intelligence are the people who truly succeed in work as well as play, building flourishing careers and lasting, meaningful relationships. Because emotional intelligence isn't fixed at birth, Goleman outlines how adults as well as parents of young children can sow the seeds.”

It doesn’t come prepackaged

The book resonated with me because of my beliefs on rearing children. While I was shaped from birth by my parents and other adults in my life, another factor that contributes to my point of view is my age. My views were already pretty formed before it got to be really popular to let the child take the lead in her own upbringing. By the time my own children were grown, I found myself working with parents and children where frequently the child was clearly calling the shots. It was not a happy time for anyone--not me, not the parents, not the children in question. No one was having fun; the system was not working. Why? Because a child does not come with emotional intelligence prepackaged inside her like a little seed just waiting for the appropriate time to begin to germinate and grow. Young children quite simply act out of their emotions. If they want something, they will take it, or cry until they get it. Their world is very narrowly about them in the here and now. They have to be guided into thinking about things outside of themselves, such as other people, consequences to choices, etc. As frightening as it may be, it falls to us as parents to model and guide and shape them into competent, confident people.

Contrary to popular opinion

In grad school we were taught to never say no - about how damaging it is to the child to hear a negative word like that one. Bad for the self esteem, they said. At the time, I was 10-20 years older than my classmates, and had reared two children. For me, the topic under discussion was not theoretical; it was couched in absolute reality. I had struggled countless times with the question, “What should I do now?” when faced with a question on how to guide a child of mine. One particular day I raised my hand in class and expressed the opinion that if a child never hears no, he likely will never truly understand yes – both fundamental, real life concepts. The class fell silent as every eye was trained on me in disapproval.

My response to the theory of never saying no is that the only way a child will really understand what yes means is if you also teach her what no means. If you never say no, yes has no meaning. By the time a child gets to kindergarten, if she’s had no training in self-regulation, if she’s never heard “no” as a word that helps steer her in a wise direction, brace for a rough year. Some of the scariest people on earth are out-of-control kindergartners.

It starts shortly after birth

Reality is, if we want our children to self regulate, it is up to us to guide them into knowing how to do that. It means we have to think about what our role should be with our kids, what we desire their life to be like, and then view ourselves as responsible for getting them there. When faced with behaviors we are not keen on, we could ask the question: “What will this behavior of my two-year-old look like on a teenager?” Asking that question can bring clarity into many situations.

When a child is two and wants a sticky candy bar and it is getting close to meal time, he might not take  kindly to hearing “not now.” His reaction might be anything from asking again, to whining, to crying, to an out-and-out tantrum. We pretty much expect a toddler to behave this way. If he is never taught or guided into a more mature form of reacting, it is likely that as a teenager, tantrums will be the order of the day, only then the stakes will be much higher. Think “driver’s license” and “tantrum” for a really scary picture. Teaching a tiny child how to self-regulate is far easier than trying to begin when the child is already half-grown and his ability to do a lot of harm to himself and others is much greater.

Nip it in the bud

That term pretty much sums it up for me. We can far more easily nip naughty behaviors in the bud when the child is very young than we can when she is on the brink of adulthood and still choosing out of her emotions. When the child is two, nipping looks like guidance: no harm done and a lot of good instilled.

Overall, it's a knotty question. How do we find the balance between helping our children develop executive function so they can grow into highly successful adults, without completely stifling who they are?

 

Child1st Publications, LLC

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