Sunshine Parenting

Show notes & links available here.

In this episode, I'm talking to Steve Baskin about raising strong, anti-fragile kids. Steve and his wife, Susie, are the owners and directors of Camp Champions in Marble Falls, Texas. For over 27 years, Steve has studied the camp experience and how to make it the best possible growth opportunity for kids. In his new essay, A Manifesto to Strength (published below for the first time) and in this interview, Steve shares his thoughts on what we can do as parents to raise kids who aren't so fragile.

Big Ideas

• The summer camp experience offers kids so many benefits and opportunities for education and development.
• Avoid over-parenting and preparing the road for your child. Instead, prepare your child for the road by doing less for them as they get older.
• Kids who are allowed to experience life's ups and downs, learn to advocate for themselves and who learn from their mistakes are more equipped for adulthood.
• Protecting kids from discomfort is not the same thing as protecting our kids from danger. It does more harm than good in the long run.
• Camp is a powerful place to build internal strength.
• Resilience means you are worse after a challenge, whereas if we are anti-fragile, we should emerge from a challenging situation stronger. An example is a child who overcomes homesickness at summer camp and then has an easier time going away from home when it's time for college.
• It can be hard for parents to see their kids for the age they truly are. Instead, they see the "weighted average of all their memories."

Quotes

Audrey: "We have a lot in common in that we take this camp thing very seriously and are always thinking about how we can better deliver the social-emotional life skills growth that kids need at camp."

Steve: "One of the things I began to see early on was over-parenting, first the helicopter parenting and then the snowplow or lawnmower parenting. One is watching your child's emotion and then trying to manage your child's experience and prepare the road for your child, instead of your child for the road, and I saw that as problematic."

Steve: "We joke that we have a rule of parenting through laziness. If you think your child can do it, let them. If you suspect they might be able to do it, let them. If you think there's an off-chance, let them."

Steve: "College campuses are responding to what they're getting. I think the horse is already out of the barn. The kids get there and they have had their parents get on the phone and talk to the teachers. They've had parents adjudicate their friendships. They've had their college applications coauthored. They've been used to having someone say, 'If it's too much for you, sweetheart, your mom and dad are here, we're going to protect you. And it sends a really deleterious signal."

Steve: "It's one of the saddest ironies that we, in our unbelievably, almost overwhelming love of our children and in an attempt to create some sort of advantage for them, we're baking in longterm disadvantage."

Steve: "We think we need to protect our children. And the answer to that is yes, of course, from starvation and moving cars and juggling chainsaws. There are things that are legitimately dangerous. But we are not there to protect them from any discomfort or any pain or any sadness. What we need to do is not protect but prepare."

Steve: "When you're handed that delicate baby on day one, you'd better be in the protect and provide business. You'll make sure they're not hurt and they're fed. But every day after that, we ought to be protecting and providing just a little bit less and preparing a little bit more."

Steve: "There's a general parenting trend that equates protection from discomfort with protection from danger and it makes loving parents create fragile children."

Audrey: "In general, the kids we see at our camps are less fragile than the general population. Parents who are willing to let their kids go to camp are already ahead of the game."

Steve: "Parents tend to think in binary terms: I don't want a fragile child; I want a resilient child. And that misses a third, much more ambitious and exciting axis. Fragile is what happens if you drop a crystal glass on the ground. It breaks. If you drop a Solo cup, nothing happens. It's not better, it's not worse. It's the same. It's resilient. Anti-fragile is something that, when exposed to stress, challenge or difficulty, actually becomes stronger. So your immune system is anti-fragile. You get exposed to a disease and you're less likely to get it in the future."

Steve: "We need to experience challenges and get through them to know that we're capable of it and just to build those psychic muscles."

Steve: "I want (kids) to fail at something and then know through perseverance and try, try again that they can overcome that failure."

Audrey: "(When kids forget their homework) people overestimate the importance of grades and underestimate the importance of getting the zero and realizing that the world doesn't end. And remembering it the next day."

Steve: "We want our children to avoid any short term discomfort but at the cost of long term capability."

Steve: "I'd rather have kids think the world is an adventure and know that everything's not going to be perfect. If you constantly send a (fearful) message, you make fragile children who are scared of the world. When it comes time for them to go into the workplace or go into college or go do something bold and exciting, they're going into a world that's scary. They're going into a world that they're not prepared for."

Audrey: "Some parents have almost zero risk tolerance. They'll think about all the things that could possibly go wrong instead of all the learning and growth that could go right."

Audrey: "We have a lot of fears that are unfounded. We've been inundated with scary, sad stories in the media but the chances of those happening to your child are very small."

Steve: "My struggle with social media is that it has hacked our evolutionary wiring in the same way that Haagen Daaz or Pringles have hacked our wiring for fats, sugars, and salts so that we won't eat foods we were evolved to want. We want human connection. I think that Snapchat is to human connection what Pringles is to nutrition. It feels almost like food, and then you do a whole lot of it and you feel bad afterward."

Audrey: "Teach them to be discerning. It's not like you send them out with no guidance...We're showing them, we're watching them do it, we're feeling comfortable with them doing it and then we're letting them do it."

Steve: "If a parent were to say, 'What can I do?' my first answer is always, 'Less.'"

Steve: "Always work off the assumption that they're okay. 'You've got this, I believe in you. You're strong.'"

A Manifesto to Strength by Steve Baskin

In recent years, we have read a great deal about grit and resilience.

We have also seen studies about emotional fragility in our young people. Even beyond the studies, I have personally seen a rise in young people (often first-time campers) who struggle with overcoming adversity and bouncing back from failure.

But we know that life will have its challenges. Our children will experience failures. They will experience loss and potentially even tragedy.

I can think of no greater task as a parent or an educator than to help prepare our children to overcome these future struggles.

But in order to do so, we must face an important realization.

Doing so will be hard for us.

As parents, we want to protect our children from dangers and hardships. Our desire to protect them from real threats can also lead us to going too far. In our love, we can find ourselves striving to protect them from discomfort, embarrassment, sadness, or boredom. Their pain or discomfort becomes ours and we often do everything we can to eliminate it.

But this does not serve them. Our children need to learn how to cope with disappointment, heartache, sadness, and failure. They need to learn how to deal with an awkward social situation and social break-ups. We should not be absent: we should be there to let them know that we have experienced similar challenges and that we are available to help them.

But we need to let them have these experiences themselves now. Learning to cope with challenge is like developing resistance to diseases. You become better at it through exposure to the challenges. Children are "anti-fragile", which is to say that they become more capable through challenge. [I recently wrote an article explicitly on this topic.]

I share this because it deeply influences how camp benefits your child.

We want camp to be full of friendships, laughter, fun, and activities. But we also know it is a powerful place to build internal strength. I use "strength" rather than "resilience" for a reason. "Resilience" simply means that you are no worse after a challenge. If we are indeed anti-fragile, we should emerge from a challenging situation stronger. With that in mind, I hope some of the following happens to every camper:

• They are homesick and overcome it so that they will know they can thrive outside of their parents' shadows. This will be critical when they go to college.
• They have a heated dispute with a friend, are upset, and eventually, find a resolution.
• They try something new and fail. And fail a few more times. And then succeed through perseverance.
• They try something and fail without an eventual triumph. We will not always win or succeed. Children should know that they can survive those situations, too.

I want counselors to be there to support our campers after these challenges, but not to prevent them from ever happening.

One of the odd gifts of camp is that it is fun and joyful enough to allow these growth moments to happen and still feel like a positive experience.

I once thought that the challenges (homesickness, cabin squabbles, struggles to learn a new skill) were the price you paid for the joys. As the cliché says, "No pain, no gain." "Into every life, some rain must fall."

But now I know that the pain IS the gain. These challenges and struggles are building capabilities and capacities in your child that will bear fruit later in life. When other 18 year-olds are suffering from homesickness as college Freshmen, your child will be there to comfort them. When a friend gets fired from a job or suffers from a break-up, your child will understand the disappointment and provide empathy. And when your child has his or her own troubles, they will know they have overcome issues in the past.

Here's to strong children!

Steve Sir

About Steve Baskin

Steve Baskin is the executive director of the boys' side of Camp Champions. In addition, he is a partner at Camp Pinnacle and Everwood Day Camp.

Steve is a lifelong camper. He first attended camp when he was 8 and he continued for 11 years. In his years as a camper and a counselor, he discovered the power of the camp experience to develop confidence, social skills, and joy.

He even wrote about camp in his college applications as one of the defining experiences of his life. After graduating with honors from Davidson College, he got off the camp track for a few years during which he was an investment banker with Goldman Sachs in New York and Simmons & Company in Houston. He then went to Harvard Business School, where he decided to pursue his true passion: summer camp. He and Susie have been full-time camp owners since 1993. Steve is lucky to have the pleasure of partnering with his wife (and best friend) and raising their 4 kids.

Steve has been featured in articles in the Wall Street Journal, American Way magazine, the Houston Chronicle and the Austin-American Statesman. He has written for Psychology Today on youth development, education, and parenting. Steve chaired the Tri-State Camp Conference (the largest camp conference in the world) from 2008-2010. In 2009, he received the National Service Award from the American Camp Association(ACA). In 2010, he was appointed Treasurer of the ACA and serves on its Executive Committee and on the National Board. He is currently the chair of the American Camping Foundation.

In 2013, Steve was asked to speak at his 20th Harvard reunion as an expert on parenting.

WATCH STEVE'S HARVARD TALK: PLAY ►

About Camp Champions

Camp Champions is a 2-3 week overnight camp in Marble Falls, Texas for girls and boys. It is on beautiful Lake LBJ and offers over 50 different activities. They are all about the 4 Rs: respect, responsibility, reaching out to others and taking reasonable risks.

Resources

Campchampions.com

Julie Lythcott-Haim's Ted Talk, How to Raise Successful Kids without over-parenting

Related

Ep. 128: "America's Worst Mom" Lenore Skenazy talks about Letting our Kids Grow

Ep. 101: Entitlemania with Richard Watts

5 Steps to Raising a Problem Solver

5 Ways Camp Grows Grit

Be a Better Parent by Doing Less

Ready for Adulthood Check-List for Kids

Ep. 85: Grit is Grown Outside the Comfort Zone (PEGtalk)

In this episode, I'm talking to Lenore Skenazy about how letting her 9-year-old son ride the subway alone in New York City led to her being labeled the "World's Worst Mom" and sparked the Free-Range Kids movement. Her book, Free-Range Kids: How Parents and Teachers Can Let Go and Let Grow, along with the programs developed and promoted by Let Grow, counter the culture of overparenting.

Big Ideas

• Over the last decade, Lenore has been fighting the societal belief that our children are "in constant danger from creeps, kidnapping, germs, grades, flashers, frustration, failure, baby snatchers, bugs, bullies, men, sleepovers and/or the perils of a non-organic grape."
• People feel so much fear for their kids' safety, even when there's no reason to be afraid.
• A free-range childhood means kids can go outside after school and play with their friends without it being a structured, supervised activity.
• There are 5 reasons why parents today are so much more afraid for their kids:
  1. Media -- news, films, and crime shows.
  2. Laws and fear of litigation.
  3. Experts in books and magazines that produce anxiety.
  4. Marketplace and safety products that capitalize on our fears.
  5. Technology that allows parents to monitor kids at all times.
• The Let Grow organization promotes two school initiatives:
  • Let grow Project: Kids get a homework assignment to do something on their own, without their parents' help. This promotes independence, a sense of pride, competence, and confidence."
  • Let Grow Play Club: Kids stay after school or arrive early for extended, unstructured playtime with other kids.
• The Let Grow movement is promoting Free-Range parenting laws in states around the country. The bills define 'neglect' as a blatant disregard for a child's safety and wellbeing. It's not letting a kid walk to school, come home with a latch key, or play outside.

Quotes

Lenore: "It's not like parents are crazy, it's that we are being fed so much fear from so many corners of our life and culture that it's almost impossible not to breathe it in. It's like pollution. You're just breathing it in and it gets into your body."

Audrey: "I look to you as a hero because you were at the forefront when this crazy overparenting came into play."

Lenore: "It feels so much less safe, even though statistically the crime rate is lower now than it has been in 25 years."

Lenore: "Your brain works like Google. It takes in all this information and then when you ask, 'Is it safe for my kids to walk to the bus stop today?' up pops the pictures or stories you've heard about, whether it was from 30 years ago or a Law & Order episode yesterday. Those stories are so easy to recall but they're not the most relevant results...so we start making our decisions based not on any kind of statistical reality, not on any kind of reality at all, but on the basis of all these terrible stories that have been shoved into us as we've been growing up."

Lenore: "The media is certainly an enormous reason that we are so much more afraid than our parents who weren't as saturated with these fears as we were."

Lenore: "We live in a litigious society. When you start thinking like a lawyer, which we all do, nothing seems safe enough...So you take something that is extremely safe and it is rewritten through the lawyer brain as potentially dangerous and you see everything through the lens of risk."

Audrey: "People perceive camp or especially letting your child go to camp as being so risky and dangerous. But what's amazing is that statistically, summer camps are far safer than people's backyards."

Audrey: "I think parents feel like when someone's not under their exact, very close supervision, there's this fear. You really want to trust other people with your kids, but there is always a risk."

Lenore: "(Technology) gives us this level of omniscience that is actually very oppressive to parents because it feels like you have to know literally every breath your child is taking."

Lenore: "It's as if our child is in such danger that we better be on high alert all the time or something terrible will happen and it's all our fault. That's why I feel sorry for parents raising kids in this era. The pressure to know everything and be aware of everything and worry about everything is at a breaking point."

Audrey: "I think it has actually gotten worse than what you were talking about back 12 or 13 years ago when you first wrote Free-Range Kids."

Lenore: "Let Grow, rather than working on changing minds, is focused on changing behavior. And the behavior we're thinking about is extremely similar to what happens when parents send their kids off to camp. We are trying to give kids a smidgen of independence and when they get that they're less anxious afterward and the parents are less anxious, everybody is allowed to grow."

Lenore: "Until you see that they can do something on their own, you don't even know if it's going to work, this great experiment with the people you love the most. But when you see that they're blossoming, they can handle it, it's just a remarkable transformation. And you don't go backward...You watch them and your heart fills."

Lenore: "The Let Grow project is just a way to make it easy to let go because everyone's doing it. Either everyone in the class or the school or the or the school district. So you're not the crazy mom. So there are other kids doing it, other parents doing it."

Audrey: "Because we're in a time where people look askance at the child or two siblings walking to a park to play. It's too bad. But being able to say, 'Oh this is an assignment from school.' You almost have to give your kids the words they need in order to defend themselves doing something that they are perfectly capable of doing and giving parents the permission to let their children do this."

Audrey: "If you and all of your friends at school are all letting your kids do this stuff, you're going to start talking about that. The community will start understanding--it is genius."

Lenore: "Kids have been so stunted, in a way. When there is always around somebody who's saying, 'Let me handle that for you.' We say, always helping kids isn't always helping them. And so, going to a store and talking to strangers, well, it's a store full of people. And I guess they're strangers, but they're just people. They're not criminals. And they just felt so much better about themselves and better about the world that they were making more friends. That was a, a bonus that I didn't expect."

Audrey: "People think, 'Oh well my child's not ready for such and such.' But the thing is, the way you get ready for things is practicing. And if we don't let them practice, then are they ever going to feel competent and confident and capable."

Audrey: "I'm always encouraging parents to just have kids do little things like making dinner or handling the checkout at the store. If you're not comfortable sending them on your own yet, let your child do the talking and handing them the card and running it through the thing or putting in your phone number and just let them try it in front of you until you feel confident."

Lenore: "It's not just fun for kids to do things for their parents, it's also telling them that their parents trust, believe in and need them. Those things feel so great. It's great to know that your parents don't think you're so endangered or incompetent that you can't do things on your own."

Audrey: "One of the reasons so many adolescents feel so bad is because they feel unneeded. When we are doing everything for them and not letting them start doing for themselves or helping others then they don't feel needed or valued, or necessary to a household, or to a school or a community. That's a terrible feeling."

Lenore: "When you rise to the occasion on the playground and there are little kids there and you're the grownup, cause you're a fifth grader or a fourth grader, it is a great feeling. It's not just the leadership, it is the kindness that you get into yourself and realize this is fun. They didn't even realize what they were enjoying was empathy."

Lenore: "I think camp is one of the last bastions of childhood freedom. And I think kids who are lucky enough to have it, whether it's day camp or overnight camp, they should take advantage and parents should take advantage too, because, as you said, the parents feel a lot more relaxed when they finally get to take their eyes off their kids for summer. Summer should be a time of freedom."

About Lenore Skenazy

After her column "Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone" landed her on every talk show from The Today Show to Dr. Phil, Lenore Skenazy got labeled "America's Worst Mom." Nice.

She turned around and founded "Free-Range Kids," the movement that says kids are NOT in constant danger. That grew into "Let Grow," a non-partisan nonprofit working to make it easy, normal and legal to give kids back some independence.

To that end, Lenore has lectured all over (Microsoft, DreamWorks, Sydney Opera House...) and been profiled everywhere from The New York Times to The New Yorker to The Daily Show. A journalist herself, she spent 14 years at the New York Daily News and has written for everyone from The Wall Street Journal to Mad Magazine.

In 2018, Utah became the first state to pass a "Free-Range Parenting Law," guaranteeing parents the right to let their kids do things like walk to school or play at the park without a security detail.

Links

Website: Let Grow: Future-Proofing Our Kids & Our Country

Let Grow Project (for schools)

FREE-RANGE KIDS has become a national movement, sparked by the incredible response to Lenore Skenazy's piece about allowing her 9-year-old ride the subway alone in NYC. Parent groups argued about it, bloggers blogged, spouses became uncivil with each other, and the media jumped all over it. A lot of parents today, Skenazy says, see no difference between letting their kids walk to school and letting them walk through a firing range. Any risk is seen as too much risk. But if you try to prevent every possible danger or difficulty in your child's everyday life, that child never gets a chance to grow up. We parents have to realize that the greatest risk of all just might be trying to raise a child who never encounters choice or independence.

https://vimeo.com/56107897

Jonathan Haidt and Lenore Skenazy co-authored "The Fragile Generation,"

Related

Ep. 60: The Importance of Outdoor, Child-Directed Free Play with Andy Pritikin

Ep. 65: Raising Engaged, Happy Kids with Mary Hofstedt

Ep. 78: The Danish Way of Parenting (Part 2)

Ep. 87: The Impact of Camp Experiences with Laurie Browne, Ph.D.

American Camp Association

The Camp Impact Study

In this episode, I'm joined by my good friend and longtime camp industry colleague, Brooke Cheley-Klebe. Both of us have three daughters, so we've had a lot of discussion over the years about raising girls. In this episode, Brooke and I talk about how she stays close to her daughters, currently ages 14, 11, and 7. She has many insights both as a mom and from her 25 years working with campers and staff at Cheley Colorado Camps.

Parenting girls today is more challenging than ever. We can all use new ideas and insights, and Brooke has some simple strategies to stay close to her girls.

• Parents and caregivers can help their daughters become thriving adults by focusing on our connection and relationship with our daughters.
• Show up in those little moments, such as having breakfast together, bedtime, driving in the car. Make eye contact, and connect.
• Rituals--especially around bedtime--are important anchors in your relationship with your children.
• Help girls understand that they're enough just the way they are. It's more important to be authentic than perfect.
• Teach them about practicing a growth mindset and model positive self-talk.
• In conversations, connect with fun questions that focus on their thoughts and feelings rather than their achievements, like grades and scores.
• Practices like meditation, setting intentions, being present and expressing gratitude, help to create an environment where kids, especially our daughters, thrive.
• Find hobbies, fun things to do so that our kids can see us enjoying life.

Show notes & links available here.

In this episode, I'm speaking with Niki Spears, the co-founder of the Energy Bus for Schools Leadership Journey. She started this organization to bring the positive messages of Jon Gordon's book, The Energy Bus, to schools everywhere. Niki has spent over 15 years working in education. Once an elementary school principal, she now works full time as a teacher educator and change leader.

Big Ideas

• Educators have the power to transform the culture of their schools and create an environment kids love with amazing, positive energy.
• Research clearly shows that culture and leadership greatly influence a school's learning environment and students' academic success.
• Bringing the principles from The Energy Bus to life in schools has helped transform the culture in classrooms around the country.
• A key principle taught is that you're the driver of your bus. Your attitude will help you to control the outcome.
• Giving students the opportunity to understand the power of choice is important. Start early by offering them options so they get to practice making decisions.
• People can learn to choose their responses in difficult situations.
• Ask kids to think about what brings them joy or write down what they are grateful for so that they learn ways to overcome negative thinking.
• Parents and educators can read The Energy Bus for Kids with their children. It's a story about the importance of positivity and transforming your mindset.
• It is helpful for parents to share with their children how they stay positive at home and at work and model positivity.
• Positive school climates are linked to increased high school graduation rates, turnarounds in low-performing schools, reduced school violence, and increased communication among students, families, and faculty.
• The Energy Bus program is now in over 150 schools across the country--and growing!

Audrey & Niki at The Energy Bus training, 2017.

Quotes

Niki: "The positivity is truly contagious. What you focus on, you get more of, so when you focus on the positive, more of that flows into your life."

Niki: "You're responsible for your own happiness and no one else is going to make you happy."

Niki: "Our teachers have to understand that they are the leaders of their lives. A lot of times, teachers feel as if they are the victims. That's how society makes us feel sometimes. I want teachers to understand and remember that this was their choice to become an educator."

Audrey: "What's amazing about your whole program--and the whole book--is that it trickles down. You're teaching the teachers this concept and once they've taken it in, they're passing it along to the kids."

Audrey: "I love that this training is not just some kind of esoteric concept for teachers, but it's so immediately applicable at the school."

Niki: "If we want to see magic take place in the classroom, we need to address the elephant in the room, which is adult behavior."

Niki: "I know our jobs are challenging, but if we have a positive attitude going in, then that positivity will definitely trickle down to our students who need us to be present for them."

Audrey: "Teachers need this training because you can't just depend on a school administrator to solve an issue that's about a culture."

Niki: "We can't control the events, but we can control our response to the things that happen to us."

Niki: "If they take that time to pause and think about their choices, they are becoming empowered and they're sitting in the driver's seat now, as well."

Niki: "It's not all about one person being in control, but it's about empowering people to understand that they are in charge of their thoughts, actions, and results."

Niki: "At one of our schools in Texas, when we walked in they were playing music, the kids were greeting each other in the hallways, they're dancing, and you could tell the staff loved being there. It was a fun place to be that day. Every school should have this kind of energy."

Niki: "You do have a choice about how you look at a situation and about whether or not you're going to adopt a belief."

Niki: "When we conduct training, people come up with their own strategies. They collaborate. We teach them the principles and they decide how to teach that principle to their students. It's amazing what happens when you empower people to do that."

Niki: "If you're not in the driver's seat, nothing is going to happen. I talk a lot about taking 100% responsibility. There's so much power in taking responsibility. When we blame and complain, the only thing we are doing is keeping up the drama. Your bus is stuck in the mud."

Niki: "Love your passengers. In schools, we talk a lot about bullying and what happens when we have anti-bullying campaigns is more incidents of bullying because you just reinforced bullying. So if we reinforce kindness and love in our schools, we see more of that."

Audrey: "When you tell kids what not to do, all they hear sometimes is what's at the end of the sentence. So instead of, 'No diving' we say, 'Jump in feet first.'"

Audrey: "I think so often adults don't really treat kids with the respect they deserve. They're people, they're humans with feelings and thoughts. And if they're not behaving appropriately, we need to get curious about why that is happening. It might be because they're not feeling loved and respected where they are."

Niki: "Each person comes into a building with their own personal culture. And so it's up to us to talk about what we share, what we have in common. It's important to talk about our mission, our vision, and to share that with students so that they can align their behaviors with where we want to go."

Audrey: "It's the power you have if you're the teacher, if you're the adult in the classroom, in the cabin group. If you're the adult, you have a tremendous ability to create this amazing positive culture for your students, your campers."

Niki: "Every teacher needs a lot of tools in their toolkit. They have to see themselves as 'edutainers' because you have to engage kids to keep their attention."

Resources

@NikiSpears4

@EnergyBusSchools

Join the Journey!

Jon Gordon's Blog

Print out bus tickets

10 Rules for the ride of your life

Related

The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy, Jon Gordon

Hop on The Energy Bus!

Ep. 58: Authentic Teaching with Jackie Beyer

The Power of Positive Words

10 Fun Ways Teachers Can Help Kids Connect with Other Kids

Happiness Habits

More pics from Niki's visit to camp in 2017:

Show notes & links available here.

In this episode, I'm talking about my theme for this month: Connection!

All month long, my posts and podcast episodes are centered around this topic, and it's one that I feel is critically important to raising thriving kids. In fact, the first chapter of my book Happy Campers (Secret #1) is Connection comes first.

6 Tips for Creating Connection #1 Ask good questions.

As Chris Thurber shared in last week's episode (Ep. 122: How to Connect with Your Teen with Chris Thurber), Parents often ask kids questions about school and sports - questions that focus on their achievements - instead of questions that are more about them as a person.

Use my Questions for Connection download (below) for 50 questions that can help spur deeper conversations with your kids. These kinds of questions show your child that you care about them, and you're interested in their thoughts and feelings.

Don't forget to ask follow up questions. If they share about a topic, circling back to that, even a day or a week later shows that you were really listening and cared about what they shared.

#2 Give kids your full attention.

As little as 5 minutes a day giving your child your full attention will make a big difference. It might be easiest to have this be at the same time every day so that it becomes a habit, such as at bedtime. Kids need our full, undivided, undistracted attention for at least a few minutes every day.

#3 Listen & Empathize

Listen and empathize, instead of trying to solve their problems for them. When parents do less preaching and teaching and just show up for their kids, it builds trust and confidence. Make sure kids know that we're on their team and we're with them whether or not they've made a mistake, gotten a bad grade, or are having some kind of problem.

#4 Have a daily sharing practice.

Sharing can be any time of day and in any format. When we look for good things in our daily lives we tend to be more positive and our wellbeing increases overall. Start by sharing one good thing that happened--or three.

#5 Write a heartfelt sticky note

Use one of my Sticky Note Solutions to connect with your kids. Leave an encouraging note on their bathroom mirror, on their pillow, or in their lunch box. Tell your child something you really appreciate about them and something that's an inner quality or what we call a Level 3 affirmation.

#6 Use their "Love Language"

Find out what your child's love language is and show them you care by giving small gifts, acts of service, quality time, positive compliments, or affection. Even though we can all appreciate any kind or loving gesture, there are certain ways that we feel most connected with other people. Kids really enjoy it when we speak their love language.

Big Ideas

Creating a close and connected family culture that promotes positive, lifelong relationships is the most important thing we can do for our children.

Forming a positive, nurturing relationship with your child will help ensure your child's future happiness and success in all areas of life.

Feeling appreciated and accepted for who they are, and knowing that parental love is not conditional on performance, is critical to your child's well-being.

Our kids need to clearly get the message of belonging at home: "You are valued and needed here."

Quotes

Audrey: "You can really develop a close bond with someone when you just take the time to ask good questions and then listen intently to their response."

Audrey: "When I'm talking to campers at camp about being a good friend, I share with them that asking questions is a great way to get to know people better and to get closer with your friends. And then really listening to their response and asking followup questions about their answers is like the next level."

Audrey: "I think that full attention is something that is really rare these days. We're all so distracted that to give someone our full, focused attention takes intention."

Audrey: "Attention means really not just not having any distractions present, but clearing your mind and being just really mindfully present with your child."

Audrey: "When our children come to us with their latest kind of issue, challenge, problem, instead of jumping in with our advice and insight and wisdom, take a deep breath, let a little pause happen in the conversation and then say something empathetic."

Audrey: "That's probably the key to so many relationships. Instead of offering our advice and wisdom, just offer our empathy and our connection and being there for them."

Audrey: "I do encourage some kind of daily sharing habit, whether it's just between you and your child or your whole family. It really does improve your connection and it also improves your child's communication skills because they're both sharing with others and they're listening and learning to hopefully ask followup questions and be more aware of what's going on with other people as well."

Audrey: "Sometimes in the day to day life, we're so caught up and keeping things moving forward that I feel like especially when my kids were younger, I spent a lot of time just kind of nagging them. It was so much about logistics was a lot of our conversation, so it wasn't really a very connected feeling."

Audrey: "If you know your child has been really busy at school and regularly has been so great about doing their chores, but you step in and do it for them and say, 'Hey, thanks so much for working so hard at home. I wanted to give you a little lighter load today so I folded your laundry for you.' That would go a long way in just letting your child know how much you care about them."

Resources / Related Posts & Podcasts

Connection Through Questions

Arthur Aron's 36 questions

Ep. 122: How to Connect with Your Teen with Chris Thurber

Ep. 121: The Power of Showing Up with Dr. Tina Payne Bryson

Giving Kids Our Full Attention

11 Ways to Help Kids Create REAL Connections

Ep. 116: Why We Need to Unplug to Connect with our Families

Show notes & links available here.

In this episode, I'm chatting with Dr. Chris Thurber, a legendary trainer in the camp industry and a clinical psychologist who works at Phillips Exeter Academy, about how important it for parents to connect with their teens. Chris has developed online training programs for educators and youth leaders around the world and many of the best practices and concepts he teaches apply to parents. We also discuss how the skills kids learn at camp can help them to thrive in life.

Big Ideas

• Even one summer working at a summer camp can be so valuable for the experience gained and training in relational, leadership, and communication skills.
• Much of the training camp counselors receive is helpful for teachers and parents.
  • Thurber's Tic-Tac advice: Expend as little energy as possible, "no more energy than a Tic-Tac." Take a break from lecturing or nagging and instead use the low-energy responses of a look, a point, or just saying the child's name.
• In our society today, it is harder than ever to be an adolescent. One big reason is the competitiveness of education. Colleges are getting more applications from students around the world as high school graduation rates continue to climb.
• Parents and students should consider alternatives to college such as apprenticeships and vocational training.
• Parents need to have more conversations with their kids--girls and especially boys--about their emotions. Expressing empathy helps to alleviate the pressure that kids are feeling these days. When parents minimize or downplay their feelings, kids do not feel connected.

Quotes:

Chris: "The reason I think Happy Campers is a brilliant book is you've taken the lessons that we get to practice in a very intense way as camp professionals for, you know, seven, eight, nine weeks with constant feedback about whether it works or not. And I don't mean that kids were filling our questionnaires. I mean, they're either listening or they're not, or they're being compliant or they're not...It's a wonderful laboratory and classroom for parenting."

Chris: "We have an untapped resource in a sense at camp. Everyone who is lucky enough to be a staff member at a camp is going to be that much better as a parent. The rest of the world can benefit from what we've understood about child development and behavior management, leadership, supervision, physical and emotional safety."

Chris: "Instead of having high school graduates who are excited about going to college or university, they're starting to feel the pressure, even in elementary school or early middle school, to set themselves apart from the crowd, to develop a unique talent, to begin preparing their resume for college."

Chris: "It's creating a tremendous amount of pressure for adolescents and that's a problem. They're more anxious, more depressed. It's taking an emotional toll. Also, we're not thinking creatively as adults about education broadly construed. You don't necessarily need a college degree."

Chris: "Apprenticeship is the model we use at summer camp. We have younger leaders apprenticing with older leaders or younger counselors with older counselors so you're learning on the job. We should be applying that to more things."

Chris: "It's awesome if you get a bachelor's degree in English literature or physics or computer science, but not everyone wants that, needs that or has that as a career path. And I think we have, as a society, fallen victim to the perceived prestige of a college or university degree and completely overlooked expanded opportunities for vocational training and apprenticeships."

Audrey: "You know that what makes a thriving adult is not a test score or even a degree from us particular place. It's these character traits and these interpersonal skills and this emotional depth and all these things that actually can be counter to when we're so focused on these specific metrics."

Audrey: "What do you want to be building and growing in yourself and in the kids you work with? You want people who are going to be great friends, who are going to stop and help someone who needs help. When you're so busy climbing your way up to something, you make decisions and sometimes you're not your best self."

Chris: "I recommend camp because it's the ideal complement to a traditional or non-traditional classroom setting. You take kids from being mostly inside and bring them outside. You take kids from mostly sitting to mostly running around. You take kids from doing things that have a lot of numbers, quantitative marks associated with them and put them in less structured, less evaluative circumstances."

Chris: "It's a way of stretching your brain and building resilience that will not only relieve stress and boost your mood, but also make you more resilient to future challenges. Camp is not the panacea, but it's a huge part of robust youth development."

Chris: "Ask better questions. Students here, like students at a lot of schools, are really sick of parents asking, what were your grades? Or if we want to steer clear of performance markers, what'd you do today? How was school? Those are well-intentioned questions. They're benign but they're not nurturing a relationship."

Chris: "There are many students here with wonderful relationships with their parents. And I think a big key to that is taking an interest in your child as a person and how are they unique and how are they evolving, developing rather than continuing to try to fit them into some mold."

Chris: "Kids need, people need room to be creative and be themselves. I want parents to encourage, to say that it's okay, who knows what it will lead to, but it doesn't need to lead to anything if it feeds your soul. The most authentically happy people in the world are the ones who tap into one of their signature strengths in service to other people."

Audrey: "I think there's a lot of value in adults and parents showing kids what it's like to tap into those things even if it's different. If they see you doing something you enjoy, they learn that adults do things they enjoy and they're having fun and they meet other friends that way. So that modeling is really important."

Chris: "Model this kind of humility and show your kids, not tell them, how to live. Show them what it is to balance work and play and sleep and get a little exercise and model what it's like to bounce back from failure. If you say something that you realize didn't have the intended effect or was the wrong thing to say, don't move on and pretend like nobody heard it. Talk about it, fix it. If you're enraged, that's not the time to debrief it, but you can always circle back."

Chris: "Talk with your kids about what your vulnerabilities are. It's such an important thing to be able to do. For well-intentioned parents who make missteps, you shouldn't view your kids as fragile. They can bounce back from something you said or didn't say or forgot. They need to see you trying hard. They need to see you learning from mistakes."

Chris: "Provide empathy but when you get to the end of your empathic statements, full stop, let it sink in. Let your kid respond. Let them just process the fact that you acknowledged some of the dimensions of their emotional experience. We are all tempted to immediately follow our empathic statement with problem-solving. But when someone is in distress, whether it's they didn't like the news they heard from a college or the grade they got on a test or the fact that you know their significant other just broke up with him by text message, or whatever it might be, they don't want to hear the solution right now and they probably know what the solution is anyway."

About Dr. Chris Thurber

Dr. Christopher Thurber enjoys creating and sharing original content for business leaders, independent educators, and youth development professionals. He is a board-certified clinical psychologist, educator, author, and father. Chris earned his BA from Harvard University in 1991 and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from UCLA in 1997.

A dedicated teacher from a young age, Chris has more than 30 years of experience working with camps and independent schools. He has written numerous book chapters and scholarly articles on leadership, homesickness, and youth development. An award-winning contributor to Camping Magazine and Camp Business, Chris has also shared his opinions and expertise on national and international radio, television, print media, podcasts, and webinars, including The Today Show, Martha Stewart, and CNN.

In 1999, after a two-year post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Washington School of Medicine, Chris accepted a position as psychologist and instructor at Phillips Exeter Academy, a coeducational, independent school in seacoast New Hampshire. Combining his love of research, teaching, and clinical work, Chris's work at Exeter has grown to include publications and presentations for The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS) the British Boarding Schools Association (BSA) and the Australian Boarding Schools Association (ABSA).

Chris has keynoted conferences for all three associations and has delivered guest lectures on the differences between Chinese and American public education, as well as the complementary nature of schools and camps at schools in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Wenzhou.

In 2000, Chris and his lifelong friend, Dr. Jon Malinowski, co-authored the critically acclaimed Summer Camp Handbook, hailed by psychologist and parent, Dr. John Weisz, as "a remarkable accomplishment…the best in its field…required reading for every camper's family…the most comprehensive and scientifically sound coverage of the camp experience available."

The Summer Camp Handbook has since sold tens of thousands of copies, won a Parenting Press Gold Award, and been translated into Chinese. As part of his lifelong effort to enhance the camp experience for young people, Chris has been a guest on The Today Show, Martha Stewart, CNN, Fox, CBS Morning News, and NPR.

Chris is the Founder and CEO of CampSpirit, LLC, which provides consultation and training to professional educators and youth leaders around the world. As he traveled across five continents to present in-person staff training workshops, Chris realized that no directors of summer youth programs had enough time with their employees to provide all the necessary training prior to opening day. The increased complexity of health regulations and accreditation standards, as well as heightened awareness of child abuse and risk management, made training demands higher than ever, especially for seasonal employees and volunteers. But with a fixed period of time during which to conduct on-site training, an innovative educational solution was imperative.

Resources Mentioned

Chris Thurber Prep4Camp.com

Expert Online Training

David Brook's Road to Character

Bill Pollack's Real Boys

Michael Thompson

Related Posts/Podcasts

Why Teens Need Summer Camp More Than Ever

Ep. 89: The Power of Connection to Build Good Men with Michael Reichert, Ph.D.

Ep. 92: Creating Strong Relationships with Teens

Ep. 32: 10 Benefits of Summer Camp for Teens

Ep. 27: Raising Teens who Thrive with Stephen Wallace

11 Ways to Help Kids Create REAL Connections

Show notes & links available here.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson is one of my favorite people. She's a psychotherapist, founder and executive director of the Center for Connection in Pasadena, California, and co-author with Dr. Daniel Siegel of four of my favorite books, including her most recent one (out on January 7, 2020): The Power of Showing Up: How Parental Presence Shapes Who Our Kids Become And How Their Brains Get Wired.

Over the past several years, I've had the privilege of getting to know Tina not just as an amazing speaker and author but as a phenomenal person and friend. She even wrote the foreword for my book, Happy Campers!

In The Power of Showing Up, Tina and Dan share important research and findings about childhood attachment and how being present for our kids is so vital for their healthy development. This book is helpful not only for parents but also for adults who want to better understand how their own childhoods impact their adult relationships and how to change generational patterns of insecure attachment.

Big Ideas

• One of the best predictors for how well kids turn out is that they have a secure attachment with at least one person.
• As discussed in the conclusion of the Whole Brain Child, the most important thing a parent can do is to show up and really be present for their children, helping them build secure attachments.
• Showing up means offering a quality of presence. And it's simple to provide once you understand the four building blocks of a child's healthy development.
• Every child needs to feel what Siegel and Bryson call the Four S's:
  • Safe: We can't always insulate a child from injury or avoid doing something that leads to hurt feelings. But when we give a child a sense of safe harbor, she will be able to take the needed risks for growth and change.
  • Seen: Truly seeing a child means we pay attention to his emotions—both positive and negative—and strive to attune to what's happening in his mind beneath his behavior.
  • Soothed: Soothing isn't about providing a life of ease; it's about teaching your child how to cope when life gets hard, and showing him that you'll be there with him along the way. A soothed child knows that he'll never have to suffer alone.
  • Secure: When a child knows she can count on you, time and again, to show up—when you reliably provide safety, focus on seeing her, and soothe her in times of need, she will trust in a feeling of secure attachment. And thrive!
• There are 4 different types of childhood attachment based on parenting patterns:
  • Abusive, frightening parenting leads to disorganized attachment.
  • Avoidant attachment results when parents avoid dealing with the emotional needs of a child. Intimacy is lacking and parents are not tuned into the internal world. This type of parenting results in children who shut down emotionally and they grow up to also have this dismissive pattern.
  • The anxious parent is really unpredictable or even intrusive. The parent's emotions take over and flood into what's happening. This results in clingy, unpredictable behavior and ambivalent attachment.
  • The "Good Enough" parent is one who shows up when needed. This secure, optimal attachment pattern can be full of ruptures and mistakes as long as reparations are made with kids. They get the message: "You're safe. I'm with you. We'll figure it out together."
• When kids feel safe, seen and soothed most of the time, their brains are wired to securely know that if they're having a hard time or in distress, someone will see it and show up for them.
• Repeated kinds of secure attachment experiences build the middle prefrontal cortex. This is the seat of insight, empathy, emotional regulation, bodily regulation, attuned communication, intuition, morality, executive function, the part of the brain that allows us to be mentally healthy and to have a wide window of tolerance to withstand adversity.
• We live in a time when there is so much distraction, disconnection, and despair. The antidote is being present with each other and really focusing on connection.

Quotes

Tina: "There is one thing that can really be our North star in our relationships as caregivers with our children. And it actually applies to all of our relationships. One of the best predictors for how well kids turn out is that they have a secure attachment with at least one person."

Tina: "This to me is the most important of all of the things I know and all the things I've ever studied or written about or talked about. This is the one most important thing."

Audrey: "About 10 years ago when the Whole Brain Child came out, it wasn't as hard to show up as parents. Now, we are so fragmented and it's more normal to be distracted and not present. It's so interesting to me how the concept of mindfulness has exploded. Basically, it's just being where you are and with the person you're with. It's not some crazy concept, it's just something that now we need to intentionally practice because it's no longer common."

Tina: "This whole achievement-based way that we define success, and the focus on what kind of college your kid gets into, has really driven our parenting to this kind of hyper-parenting space where it's even harder to be present and see our kids and know our kids. That hyper-parenting is seen as the norm. And that's not what the science says that we should be doing, it's kind of the opposite."

Tina: "It's the experience we have, in particular, the repeated experiences, and even more particularly repeated relational experiences that have a huge impact on how our brain wires. So if our homes are frenetic and chaotic, and we're constantly over-scheduled and distracted and disconnected, constantly trying to just make it to the next thing, those are the kinds of experiences that are wiring the brain for that kind of pace, hyper-alert and never calm. It breeds anxiety. Instead think about how we can create environments or relationships that are actually safe havens, a safe harbor for the ship out in the storm."

Tina: "Attachment really is a mammal thing. It goes beyond humans and at it's basic, its that when we are in danger or distress, we go to an attachment figure that will help us be safe and survive. We are biologically programmed to choose someone to help us. So when parents provide that secure attachment, which looks like the 4 S's of safe, seen, soothed, then over time that leads to secure."

Tina: "You can imagine how powerful it is to give the gift of security to kids because then they find relationships, like friends and partners, that they expect to see them and show up for them. Ultimately what happens is that their brain is wired to provide the 4 S's for themselves, so they can help themselves feel safe, seen and soothed."

Audrey: "Sometimes when parents think of the word safe, it can lead to over-parenting and not allowing our kids to climb up the jungle gym or do these things that are a little bit risky. Keeping your kids safe does not mean putting the bubble wrap on and not letting them ever go anywhere or do anything."

Tina: "If we overprotect them, that is actually not making them safe. That makes them fragile. The way we learn how to be resilient and how to handle difficult things is by practicing sitting in, dealing with and walking through difficult stuff."

Tina: "It means walking with them through it and allowing them to do it. It's also not permissive. It's also having boundaries where your kids know that you mean business and you're going to hold the boundary. That actually makes them feel safe."

Tina: "Just showing up in that moment with my presence is all my child really needs. That's the key."

Tina: "There are so many competing things for what we should be doing as parents. We beat ourselves up for not doing enough and there are moments when I don't know what to do or if my instinct is right."

Audrey: "It's not about being permissive. When your child's upset about something, it's not about giving in to them. In fact, that's not right. You need to hold the boundary, but you can do it nicely. I think parents sometimes think they have to be harsh to hold a boundary because maybe that's what was modeled for them."

Tina: "The most important thing at any given moment is to really be present. We need to do our own work and have our own self-care so that we have the capacity to do it."

Tina: "If we didn't have that modeled for us or we didn't have our brains wired in that way because we had parents who were scary or who were emotionally dismissing or who made things worse instead of soothing us, we need to make sure we have people in our lives that show up for us and give us the 4 S's so that our tank gets full so that we can do that."

Tina: "I think it's such a good way to live. It's not just with our kids, but you know, when you're in the store checking out, making sure you're not on your phone and you're making eye contact with the person and just asking how are you today? Or you know, has it been really busy? Be present in whatever moments you have because it's better for the world."

Audrey: "We don't have to be perfect, we can just do the basic human showing up stuff."

Tina: "That's also a good thing to remember: Not perfect, but present. That's just a good little mantra."

Related

Helping Kids Find Their "Green Zone" (and Finding our Own!)

Ep. 20: The Yes Brain with Tina Payne Bryson, PhD

Ep. 95: Raising a "Yes Brain" Child with Tina Payne Bryson

The Yes Brain with Tina Payne Bryson

Connection Through Questions

11 Ways to Help Kids Create REAL Connections

Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D.

Learn more about Tina by visiting her websites: The Center for Connection Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D.

Other Books by Tina Payne Bryson and Dr. Dan Siegel:

The Whole Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind

No Drama Discipline

The YES Brain

In this episode, Sara Kuljis and I discuss the importance of family rituals and traditions. It's one of the topics that we wanted to cover with parents in our Raise Thriving Kids Workshop that we had in September.

Big Ideas

• Family Rituals and traditions are important because they:
  • help build a sense of shared identity and deep belonging.
  • help us organize and make sense of an ever-changing world.
  • help teach and impact faith and family values. They may remind us of our cultural backgrounds.
  • provide safe spaces and anchors in an ever-changing world.
  • help us cope with trauma and loss.
  • produce amazing memories, the silly and the sacred.
• Talk to your kids about what traditions are important to them and let them come up with their own.

Quotes

Sara: "It has been remarkable to watch how important, year after year, the daily rituals and traditions of summer camp are to our campers and to our staff. I dove in and did quite a bit of research on this and was struck by how profoundly shaping rituals and traditions are in our family cultures."

Sara: "In our fast-paced world, where people travel for work, where families are going in different directions more often, where we don't necessarily live by extended family, many of the rituals and traditions are falling by the wayside. Kids have fewer of these anchor points than they used to back in the day."

Sara: "There are things that stay the same when lots of other things are changing and it really does give us a sense of structure and stability and addresses our longing for simpler things and things you can count on. I think that's very important to kids, especially as they're growing, changing schools, maybe moving homes. Maybe family dynamics are changing, but I can count on tradition."

Audrey: "People like that security of know that things are as they were. Kids need structure, they need to know when bedtime is, but they equally need the ritual of being tucked in and having someone say prayers with them or say goodnight to them or whatever the tradition is in your family."

Sara: "Children want boundaries. They want a frame around the picture. As they are figuring out how to live life, they really crave discipline. So structure and traditions add to that and it creates a sense of safety and knowing what to expect."

Audrey: "You almost don't realize some of the practices that you do or don't do that are traditions. It is anything that you do that is part of your family's life. So many of our rituals are communicating our values."

Sara: "There are a lot of life skills, really practical stuff, that are embedded in traditions that are helpful for our kids. Traditions provide us safe spaces and anchors in an ever-changing world. The more change, the more rituals and traditions we need."

Audrey: "When things are tumultuous, you just want these touchstones of things that are still going to happen, that you can depend on still being there, regardless of what else has changed."

Sara: "I urge you to look back and think about the rituals built into your family. What are the memories that came out of that? What glue to bond a family and help you get through some of the bumpy times."

Audrey: "Sometimes when you're in it, you don't realize that those are traditions. If there's something that you do as a family that's really fun or memorable, why not repeat it each year?"

Sara: "As you think of the traditions in your own family, sometimes it feels like a lot of pressure. The big things are awesome but sometimes it's just the daily flow of life things that provide even more anchoring."

Audrey: "Returning to camp itself, or to the vacation places where your family likes to go, year after year, will help to bring calm back to the storm of life."

Audrey: "Rituals and traditions are just something that can be going on all year, every day or every weekend or whatever, Friday night, movie night, a Saturday morning hike -- it could be anything."

Resources

Find out about our next Raise Thriving Kids Workshop

100 Family Memories

5 Simple Year-End Reflection Activities

Related

If you liked this podcast episode, listen to:

Ep. 7: Family Pace and Space with Sara Kuljis

Ep. 23: Peaceful Mornings with Sara Kuljis

Ep. 63: Growing Gratitude with Sara Kuljis

Ep. 70: Parent on Purpose with Amy Carney

This episode is a live recording of my chat with Sara Kuljis about some of our favorite year-end reflection activities. Joining Sara and me for this episode is Kate Rader, one of the participants from our Raise Thriving Kids Workshop. Kate is a stay-at-home mom to 3 adventure-seeking and fun-loving kiddos, Lauren and Caroline, identical twins who are 13 and Jack, age 10, wife to her college sweetheart Jeff and curious lover of books, podcasts, and conversations about intentional parenting and living.

[caption id="attachment_6803" align="alignnone" width="1024"]Kate Rader and family[/caption]

Here's what Kate had to say about our workshop:

"It was just so wonderful to be in a room with people who care enough to be intentional about the choices they're making for their families and what they want for their families because it's a work in progress--and we're all working together."

Big Ideas

In addition to parenting books, podcasts, and coaching, workshops are a great resource for parents. Just as most people need continual training and education in their careers, parents can also take the time to learn and connect with others in order to feel invigorated. It is helpful to share what is working and to discuss best practices for strengthening family bonds. We talk a lot about the importance of self-care and modeling a balanced life for our kids.

Today we discuss the ideas I shared in my recent post, 5 Simple Year-End Reflections:

1. Create a Reverse Bucket List. Look back over your life and make a list of the cool things you've already done.
2. 100 Family Memories - brainstorm and make a list of what happened in your family this year.
3. Pick a Quote-of-the-Year. Find a quote that resonates with you, or something motivational, looking back or looking ahead, a quote you want to live by.
4. Select One Word that you want to guide you in the new year. Be authentic and make it a word that is uniquely yours.
5. Remember your Favorite Books or resources from the past year. Take time to let the new things that you have learned (in books, podcasts, workshops) to percolate and apply the concepts or practices to your life.

Pick one or two of these ideas that resonate with you. You can do an activity on your own or engage the whole family. Make the delivery of the idea fun and light. Allow people to be silly. Getting the family together over the holidays, expressing gratitude, and setting intentions together are my favorite ways to bring in the new year.

Quotes

Sara: "Sometimes parenting intentionally feels counter-cultural. When we're swimming upstream, to have fishies to swim with is so confidence building. It's reassuring, it's empowering. I've loved all the parents we have gotten to work with through this project because it has fueled me."

Kate: "The regular accountability is equally as important to me as the one-day workshop. Whether it's via podcasts, recorded conversations, or live conversations, getting together at Starbucks, or whatever it might be, that's really beneficial in maintaining the kind of wonderful feelings that we got coming out of the workshop."

Kate: "If we're going to develop a true family culture, we need to be intentional about spending time together as a family. And that time is harder and harder to come by."

Kate: "Just being together, away, experiencing some new adventures has been a neat way for us to firm up our family culture and values and make memories together. That's been a key take away for me."

Kate: "It's not about those grand gestures. It's about the thoughtful, meaningful moments where people take the time to appreciate their relationships."

Audrey: "Even if you're not a person who gives affirmations, I really don't think there's a person in this world who wouldn't mind getting a nice note saying something that someone likes about them."

Audrey: "Sometimes parents start thinking that their relationship with their child is supposed to be like a normal, reciprocal relationship. Expecting that you pour into this child and they're going to pour back to you, is not how parenting works. However, I'm seeing that once they're adults you may get more of the reciprocity than when they were kids. I get very filled up now by my adult children when they give me affirmations or send me a nice message--it's really great."

Audrey: "You keep encouraging, even if you don't think it means something because I think it really is landing somewhere."

Audrey: "Another activity could be taking a year's worth of fun texts, cards, and nice messages and putting them somewhere like in a scrapbook just as a great boost."

Sara: "I love the idea of sitting down with the whole family and saying, 'let's look way back' because there is a chance that something that I didn't consider very bucket-y might have been really significant to my kids. I think it will remind us that it has been a rich life of experiences."

Audrey: "I would challenge you to focus on yourself for your own reverse bucket list. Sometimes it's good to just think about for your own self-awareness and self-worth and knowing that you're enough just the way you are. I would suggest that the bucket list idea is more of a personal thing because it is recognizing the goals you've already achieved and the cool things that you've done, whereas the 100 Family Memories would be the things you're grateful for."

Audrey: "The goal is to try to remember (as many as) 100 things so you get down to some of the minutiae and those are some of the funny, random, individual things that happened. It's been a really fun practice."

Kate: "I think when you allow each family member to share their treasured memories from the year, it gives us insight into their personalities and their level of value and priorities, as well."

Audrey: "I like spending time at the end of the year, really thinking through what my one word is, thinking about what was good this year and what is it that I want to take into the new year and feel more of, or do more of--I love the process."

Audrey: "Determine the kind of person you want to be in the next year. Identify the characteristics of that best self. When you're being your best self, what does that look like? It has guided me a lot because once I pick a word, I then seek out resources and ideas to help me live that word better."

Kate: "It's a neat way to put the focus on how you're going to spend your time, your energy, your reading, and research--all that good stuff. When it is meaningful, it really does carry you through the year and it gives purpose to how you're spending your time."

Audrey: "It really hit me that my best contribution to my family, to the world, comes when I focus and take the time to do some research, reading, writing, thoughtful time, which is not a normal part of life anymore. You have to actually build in focus."

Audrey: "There are so many new ideas and things you can do, but to really move the needle, all you need to do is just one. I am challenging myself this year to slow down on the consumption of new information and instead get out the books I've read, look at my highlights and just recap."

Related Posts & Podcasts

5 Simple Year-End Reflection Activities

Learning to Enjoy the Little Things

100 Family Memories

#oneword

My One Word for 2019: Focus

Ep. 68 12 Parenting Tips for Happier, More Connected Families

Ep. 105 Live Above the Noise with Rob Reiher

Resources

Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living by Shauna Niequist

How to Raise An Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success by Julie Lythcott-Haims

One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp

Finding Fred Podcast

Show notes & links available here.

In this episode, I'm speaking to Dr. Jennifer Levin, a marriage and family therapist who specializes in health crises or transitions, especially related to traumatic grief and loss. We discuss ways to support others, particularly children, and promote growth after trauma.

Big Ideas

• Traumatic grief is an unexpected, sudden loss that people experience.
• Sudden, devastating events can cause a great deal of grief, trauma, and stress.
• People experience post-traumatic growth when their life changes significantly for the better due to the experience they had with the trauma.
• There are four areas wherein people experience post-traumatic growth:
  • deeper relationships
  • increased personal strength
  • positive spiritual changes
  • stronger appreciation for life in general
• Kids and adults react differently to grief and trauma. Kids tend to float in and out, whereas adults may get stuck in deep sadness and experience more of the traumatic symptoms.
• The first thing to do for children after a traumatic loss is to assure safety and reestablish some normalcy and a sense of routine and structure.
• Helpful tools for kids are sensory-based activities, mindfulness skills, guided imagery, and visualizations. We can help them learn how to take control of their situation and give them positive feedback and praise when they use a great coping skill.
• Make sure children are exposed to positive relationships with other supportive adults in their lives.
• Especially in the case of loss, it is important for families to keep talking about their feelings.
  • Memory Bowl Tip: keep a bowl and a stack of index cards in an accessible place. Any time you have a memory of the person, the dog, the loved one who has died, you write it down on the card and put it in the bowl. Then, when you're having a tough grieving day or on an occasion when the family is together, everyone can read the memories that are in the bowl. This is a great way to keep memories and family times together alive.

Quotes

Jennifer: "It's pretty amazing watching someone come in right after a loss, working through them to address both the trauma and grief and then having them say, 'Oh my goodness, I think I've grown in (this way)' and to be able to focus on that."

Audrey: "Unfortunately, we are inevitably going to face grief of some kind. It's hopeful to think that it doesn't have to lead to disaster."

Audrey: "Many of us have been blindsided by the experiences that kids share with us in the camp or school setting, where they share something really hard that they have gone through."

Jennifer: "Right after an immediate loss that's been traumatic, the first thing to do is to assure safety, establish some normalcy and a sense of routine when the world feels chaotic and out of control."

Jennifer: "We see behavioral problems come up, problems with sleep, academics, friends, when there is no routine or structure or normalcy."

Jennifer: "Containment may not necessarily lead to post-traumatic growth, but more stabilization, which is the first thing we have to do before we can start addressing trauma and grief."

Jennifer: "Post-traumatic growth is something that happens over a significant period of time and adults can play a huge role in decreasing the chances that a child will have longterm difficulties and increasing the chances for post-traumatic growth."

Jennifer: "Sometimes we have to say, 'I'm not sure how this is going to play out in the future, but right now you are safe. I got you. You're okay. I love you. All of your needs can be met right now.' This gives them a really strong foundation for growth."

Jennifer: "One thing that goes without saying is parents and adults have to take care of themselves first before they are able to give this to kids. Kids are able to tell when it's inauthentic, insincere, and when the parents are running on empty."

Jennifer: "Positive relationships with adults help foster post-traumatic growth. If it's not a parent, then its a teacher, a coach, a religious figure."

Jennifer: "Kids and adults react differently to grief and trauma. I think it's wonderful that kids can float in and out, in and out, and when they're in the moment, the feelings are intense, difficult, scary and overwhelming. But again, with the right support and encouragement, they're going to transition out and be okay."

Jennifer: "We as adults have such a role in teaching our kids how to express themselves, how to get these feelings out, and then how to cope with them."

Audrey: "Usually if a child is grieving about something, usually the adults who are closest to them are also grieving. Getting outside help is so important, even if your child appears to be fine. For them to be aware that these feelings may come up at any time and there are resources for them. That's a really important thing."

Jennifer: "Grief is such a unique experience for every person, every family. Everybody in a family grieves differently. I'm really big on acknowledgment, an adult acknowledging that they're sad or grieving, that they're fearful--that's the very first step."

Jennifer: "Acknowledge the pain. I think it's great for your kids to see you cry. It's great for them to see you express emotion and for you to say, 'Mom is really sad right now, but I'm okay. You're okay and we're going to be okay.' Then talk about that."

Jennifer: "Checking in is important because it gives the message, 'I'm here if you want to talk and if you don't, that's okay.' So what you do is monitor other things: Are they socializing with their friends? Are they doing well in school? Are they sleeping? Are they eating? Are they doing extracurricular activities? When you start to see issues there, then that's a red flag. Even though they're not talking about the grief, it's definitely impacting them."

Jennifer: "We grieve the way we live. If we're someone who doesn't share our feelings very often, then when we experience grief we are not all of a sudden going to become someone who talks about all of our feelings."

Audrey: "Keep talking about the person. Some people think it's better not to bring the person up but the last thing that someone who is grieving wants is for people to forget the person who was so important to them."

Links

More information on Dr. Jennifer Levin's private practice can be found at therapyheals.com.

Visit her new site: fromgrieftogrowth.com. You will find her free mini video course, 3 Tips for Surviving Traumatic Grief.

Dr. Jennifer R. Levin specializes in working with adults, adolescents, and teens experiencing traumatic grief and sudden loss. In 2000 Jennifer received her doctorate from UCLA in public health focusing on the needs of cancer patients at the end of life. She has served as the executive director of Hospice of Pasadena and volunteered with the American Cancer Society and the Wellness Community. Jennifer provides continuing education training, consultation, and mobile grief services to schools and community-based organizations experiencing bereavement and loss. Jennifer is a licensed marriage and family therapist with a private practice in Pasadena where she works with clients living with chronic and terminal illness, bereavement and complicated loss and traumatic death. She facilitates support groups in traumatic grief, spousal loss, teen grief and also specializes in post-traumatic growth.

Related

If you enjoyed this episode, check out:

• Ep. 112: Helping Teens Exposed to Trauma with Ruth Gerson
• Ep. 93: Teaching Healthy Relationship Skills to Improve Lives
• Ep. 80: The Emotionally Healthy Child with Maureen Healy
• Ep. 117: Raising Good Humans