Got Stress? Your Kids Do. And It Is Keeping Them From Performing at Optimal Levels
In January I had the opportunity to hear Dr. William Stixrud and Ned Johnson speak about their book The Self-Directed Child. They talked about the role high stress plays in shutting down kids’ motivation. Their talk was especially interesting to me in a couple of ways: 1. The connection between autonomy and anxiety and 2. How much their solutions are similar to what I have been writing about this year.
Lower Control = More Anxiety
How much control we feel we have has a direct effect on how well we are able to manage our anxiety. Kids’ response to stress can be built in a positive way when they have non-stressed time to process the stress in between. Additionally, when they feel they have control over their stress, they can use the stress to heighten their performance.
When faced with unpredictable stress and a low sense of control, however, stress levels remain high which leads to anxiety.
A study was done on rats where one group of rats (Group A) were shocked but by turning a wheel could get the shock to stop. Group B rats were shocked and had a wheel to turn, but turning the wheel did nothing to stop the shock (the shock was stopped at random times).
Group A rats had control of the stressor. They were still shocked over and over, but because they had a strategy for stopping it, their stress levels would return normal. Group B rats became increasingly nervous and anxious (even though the amount of shock was similar).
Let’s put that in human terms: Humans can handle stress if they feel “This is my life, and I get to run it.” On the other hand, when they feel like they have no control of the stress coming at them, the emotional part of the brain (that’s the flight or fright part of the brain) flairs, shutting the thinking part of the brain down, making it even more unlikely that a person will reach for potential solutions to reducing the stress.
Consider this factoid: Kids today have a lower sense of control every year they are in school. By that measure, it is not surprising that the rates at which kids have been diagnosed with anxiety has increased (According to the National Institutes of Health, nearly 1 in 3 of all adolescents ages 13 to 18 will experience an anxiety disorder. These numbers have been rising steadily; between 2007 and 2012, anxiety disorders in children and teens went up 20% McCarthy).
Optimal Arousal
Researchers know that an ideal environment is one where a child is challenged but not threatened. The threat is lower if the child feels they have chosen to face the challenge.
Motivation comes from self-determination. When a child is able to say, “I’m working hard at this because it is important to me,” she is still under stress, but just knowing that she has chosen the stress makes it more manageable.
Self-determination comes from competency (having the skill to do something), relatedness (there’s a purpose to what I’m doing right now) and autonomy (I have chosen this goal). The more an activity is kid-directed, the more motivated a child is going to be and the more he is going to be able to handle the stress the activity requires to do well.
Goal: Not to Make Your Kid Do Something But to Make Your Kid Want to Do Something
We know that there are things we have to make our kids do (bathe, brush their teeth, go to school). The more we can make our child want to do that thing, the less stress there is for the child around that demand.
One of my favorite examples of this from raising my daughter was around healthy food choices. Like most children, left to her own choices, my daughter would choose high sugar, high fat foods. Her second grade teacher, however, put a lot a emphasis on healthy food choices. Over the year, this teacher created a culture of “We are healthy eaters.” The kids learned a lot of information about the impact of their food choices on their growing bodies. She built up the idea for them of how they were fueling their bodies and brains for optimal growing and learning. In other words, she put the kids in control of making choices that would make them stronger and smarter—and more able (which relates back to the idea of the competency needed for self-determination). Where my daily nagging had only served to create conflict between my daughter and me, her teacher gave her a concrete vision of who she could be and how what she ate could help her be that.
Stixrud and Johnson also mentioned the importance of developing a growth mindset in kids as a way of helping them handle their stress. Growth mindset self-talk allows a child to say, “This is stressful, and at the same time, I have strategies I can use to tackle this problem” or “This is feeling really hard right now, but if I keep working at it, I’m going to figure it out.”
They also pointed out that children do not become self-motivated through routine school work: They become motivated through their passions. It is when they are engaged with what they love most that they deal with the stress of a challenge with the high focus and high effort that result in high performance. As they are experiencing that high high focus and high effort, they are sculpting their brain to handle the higher performance levels more easily. [Carol Dweck did studies that showed that just the act of explaining to kids how their brains are growing when they are engaged in a tough task motivates kids to want to tackle that task!]
A Special Note on Motivating Kids to Want to Do Their Homework
Because fights around homework are prevalent in so many homes, Stixrud and Johnson spoke specifically to the do’s and don’ts of motivating kids to want to do their homework.
DON’T work harder than your kids at their work.
I have seen kids with their head down on the table as their parents briskly gets out their books and finds the right page. The parent is saying to the child, if you won’t do this, I’ll do it for you. Or worse, if you aren’t able to do this, I’ll do it for you.
DON’T want your kid’s success more than they want it.
Instead, connect your kids’ work to something they want (like the more you are able to read, the more you will be able to meet your obsessive need for facts about dinosaurs!)
DON’T force help on your kid.
Let your kids know you are available to help if needed. If you see how they might do something more efficiently, ask permission to share. Say something like, “I have an idea of how you might organize this. Would you like to hear it?”
DO let your kids fail early and often.
The younger a child is, the lower the consequences of failure. If the child has an idea of how to approach something—even if you see the flaws in their plan—let them execute their idea. You can always help them analyze what went wrong afterwards if it goes as badly as you suspect.
DO give your kids the experience of running their own lives.
Our confidence that our kids have what they need to figure things out—to run their own lives—is in itself motivating. What you are saying to your child is, in effect, I trust you have the tools to make the decisions that are right for you.
DO stay calm when things go wrong.
Your calm in the face of setbacks teaches your child to stay calm. A calm child can access his thinking brain and move forward. A panicking, anxious child can’t do her best problem solving.
DO help kids keep the big picture in mind.
Teach your kids to have faith that the situation is going to work out in the long run. Just because things are disastrous now, doesn’t mean that’s going to be your life.
DO help kids keep things in perspective.
Kids tend to see things in black and white (“If I don’t get into Harvard, I’m going to end up flipping burgers”). Remind kids of studies like the one that shows that class valedictorians by age 30 are NOT doing better than the top third of their peers.
Chronic Stress Takes Its Toll, So Take Steps to Prevent it
Children’s brains are constantly being stimulated today. Even if kids are doing fun activities, their focus and engagement is expected. Even if they are choosing to put themselves in stressful situations for reasons that are really important to them, the human body does require relief from stress to function optimally.
As parents, we can support our children in getting relief from stress so they can continue to perform. Stixrud recommends two main ways.
Radical Down Time
Radical Down Time is the notion that kids should have time to do nothing. That could quite literally mean time for spacing out or time for day dreaming. It might mean doodling randomly or playing with a fidget spinner. It could mean meditating. While your kids might argue video games and watching television relax them, both are too stimulating and do not fit into this category. Not even reading for pleasure has the kind of lack of mental engagement that makes Radical Down Time effective.
Sleep
The most effective and most important kind of Radical Down Time is sleep. Rest is the basis of all activity, and sleep is the best way for your brain to push the reset button.
Parents can’t make their kids sleep, but they can both set the standard for sleep and they can limit the distractions. When parents leave their electronics outside their room and go to bed at a consistent time, they are showing the value of sleep by their example.
The standard of “Do you get enough sleep?” is “Do you wake up on your own?” As a parent, make sure you are doing that—even if you have to rearrange your life to make that happen. You will model your increased energy levels and increased efficiency for your kids.
I once came across a wonderful factoid (sorry, I forget where): A teen’s brain on 2 too few hours of sleep is like a teen who has just drunk two beers. Would you expect your kid to focus and learn having drunk two beers? No.
Don’t let the need for finishing schoolwork be an excuse for not going to bed on time. It starts a vicious cycle of kids getting groggier and groggier and thus less and less efficient at getting their work done. If need be, take their books away when you take away their electronics. Let your kids know that their sleep is more important than their homework! What? Did I, the former teacher, really say that? Yes. Kids who haven’t gotten enough sleep are not coming to school ready to learn. I would rather have a kid not finish his homework but be fully alert in my classroom than visa versa. Eventually—with enough consistent sleep—a child will learn to manage his work in the time he has. (If he does not, this is a good sign to the teacher that she is assigning too much homework!).
What’s your best bet for raising self-directed young adults? Help them learn how to cope with stress by empowering them to make choices autonomously and teach them no matter the circumstances, there is a limit as to what the human body can tolerate: Pushing the reset button is critical to success.