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by Laura Kastner, Ph.D.

NEWS FLASH! Twenty years of research has established that emotional intelligence—social and emotional skills—truly does foster success in kids. Parents should be craving this stuff for their kids more than perfect SAT’s and Olympic level athletic skills! In fact, it’s so integral to educational achievement and mental health that congress is funding “social and emotional” learning programs for school classrooms and war veterans.

Why aren’t parents buzzing about this? Why is there still more obsession with grades, AP class enrollment and talent development than sharing intimate and positive moments in the family? Is emotional intelligence just “too mushy” a concept, since you can’t measure it as easily? Perhaps—but I think the big rub is that it is best developed in the home. Many parents would rather go “buy a package” than be accountable themselves for demonstrating healthy social and emotional behaviors for…hmmm…a couple of decades.

What is the parenting package that helps to develop this vital essence?

I have created an acronym (RELATE) to identify the emotional and social skills we want to model and encourage in the home. These skills predict higher achievement, better emotional adjustment and more successful relationships in your child’s future.

R Remain calm so that you can interact with loved ones in respectful ways.
E Express emotions appropriate to the situation and the child’s age.
L Label emotions, giving your children a broad vocabulary for expressing their own.
A Acknowledge the cause of your emotions, without blaming, just describing.
T Take responsibility for managing your negative emotions, especially while in conflict.
E Empathize with your child’s feelings genuinely.

Remember that empathy does not imply agreement or giving into a child’s rage, protest or demands. Capable and authoritative parents are compassionate, but they don’t spoil their kids. They appreciate that children can be wildly intense, disappointed, anxious, angry and irritable, but they don’t react to these emotions. They hold the line on behavioral expectations, but accept that children have messy feelings.

Kids can be quite disrespectful when they experience their messy and negative feelings. Even tweens and teens can’t regulate their emotions consistently due to the immaturity of the prefrontal cortex (the “thinking” and “impulse control” center of the brain). Neurobiological maturation is a long term project that takes over twenty years. As the parent, you are the one who is supposed to have self management skills up and running, not them. Being patient and skillful with children who truly are “works in progress” is what our book, Getting to Calm, is all about.

What is “good enough” parenting and why is it harder to achieve these days? Continue reading →

by Laura Kastner, Ph.D.

Do you have F.A.D.D.?  Family Attention Deficit Disorder? Oh, no! Another shrink identifying a deficit syndrome! Yeah, well, it’s true. We have a severe shortage of quality time filled with fun, laughter and engaged family interactions without screens. Teens report that they want more time with their families. But they say the same thing about sex ed. And yet when parents kick start either agenda, teens will roll their eyes, groan and try all kinds of avoidance. It takes a huge commitment to overcome teen resistance and create good times at home without screens, but it’s worth it. Here’s why…

Research studies on the parent-child love bond have associated “warmth”, “cohesiveness”, “secure attachment” and “connectedness” with healthy child development. Loss of this “good feeling glue” exposes your kids to all sorts of problems. Once the reservoir of good feelings in a family dries up, everything else starts shriveling up too—like children’s cooperation, self esteem, academic achievement, resistance to negative peer influence, and the impact of your discipline.

While boundaries, discipline and other resources are also related to optimal healthy development, the parent child relationship is critical, and it needs to be nourished with good times together. The parent role of civilizing kids is so onerous that we must have happy times to compensate for all the drudgery!

So, what are some ideas for how to spend quality time with tweens and teens?

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"Mom, you're ruining my life!"

by Dr. Laura Kastner, Ph.D.

One of the hottest topics in clinical psychology these days is what we psychologists call “emotional regulation” You might know it as “self control” or “emotion management” and understand that it’s important, because without it, kids would not be able to handle disappointments, follow rules and adapt to upsetting circumstances—and neither would we!

Dealing effectively with negative emotions is important for kids. It helps them deal with mean peers, painful break-ups, and unfairness or misunderstandings.

Self control is a powerful predictor of future success. Young children who can control their impulses and delay gratification end up having better lives and becoming big achievers.

How do kids develop this wonderful skill? Effective emotion management is partly determined by genetics, but a lot depends on what happens in that most intimate, important and labor-intensive relationship with parents. So let’s start with the parent part of the equation.

We like to focus on the loving times we spend with our kids, but let’s face it, we all lose it sometimes. Everybody has tempers that flare and buttons that get pushed—some more than others—and it causes neurons to fire in the most primitive part of the brain (called the “amygdala”). That’s why parents often start acting and sounding like children themselves!

“Flooding” occurs when people get anxious, fearful, or angry. They report that they “lost it” (their mind, temporarily), “melted down” (like a nuclear reactor), and “hit the wall”(and they might have). Brain scientists call this an “amygdala hijack,” which is an apt term, since the emotional brain truly does ambush your thinking brain (the “prefrontal cortex”) and holds it hostage until you cool off.

This hijack is why good parents end up yelling, criticizing, swearing, belittling and threatening, even though we all know that communicating this way doesn’t help us get through to our kids — and can hurt our relationship.

What’s a good parent to do? Try the C.A.L.M. approach:

• C—Cool down (get your heart rate down, self soothe, breathe deeply).
• A—Assess your options (What are the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches
  you might take for patching up the spat and problem solving? Talk now or later?
  This step automatically engages the prefrontal cortex so that good judgments can be
  made right after the cool down).
• L—Listen with empathy (When re-engaging your child, acknowledge your child’s
  feelings first, without any “but’s”. Empathy doesn’t mean approval or agreement,
  but it does open up communication channels).
• M—Map a plan (Use your calm and wise mind to figure out realistic goals and how to reach them).

You’ll need to role model this hundreds – maybe even thousands! — of times before you can expect your kids to do the same! Read more about it here.

Andy loves to watch things blow up. He likes violent computer games, fireworks and paint-ball. He’s already been caught purchasing M-80’s online. His parents wonder what Andy’s obsession about explosives is all about.

Jayne is one of those girls who liked to act like a teenager when she was 6 years old, especially the sexy ones depicted on MTV and in celebrity magazines. She loves make-up, shopping and suggestive dancing. It was all her parents could do to keep her from having sex before the age of 14.

Conrad is a regular guy who loves sports, his buddies and fun. Early maturation, good looks and popularity landed him invitations to parties and dates in middle school. At 13, his parents feel like they need to police his phone, computer and even his bedroom windows.

The biological drive for risk-taking is influenced by both genes determining temperament and the brain/hormonal changes of early adolescence. Andy, Jayne and Conrad want to experience excitement due to hard-wired and genetically-programed predispositions originating in their brains. Articles on zeal and yearning delve into the nature of these motivational forces and the ways they can produce both impressive competency-building and scary risk-taking.

Continue reading →

By Laura Kastner, Ph.D.

Call it “entitle-mania” (we did in Getting to Calm and a past ParentMap article), or indulgence, or just plain spoiling, but many families do it and wish they didn’t. The U.S. financial sector is not the only economic system that needs fixing. Most families admit to lacking optimal policies for teaching their kids the value of a dollar. They also acknowledge that spoiled kids are a big pet peeve. The trap is easy to identify—kids are easier to deal with when you give them the stuff they want and a break on chores.

One parent I see in my practice put it this way, “I know I should “just say no, but I hardly even see my son because of his busy high school schedule. Plus, he’s always so grumpy and annoyed with me. When I buy him what he wants or do his chores for him, he turns all sweet and affectionate. I can’t help myself—I give in all the time.”

As parents, it is our responsibility to prepare children for the adult world in which they will need to live within a budget and do a lot of drudgery and household chores. Therefore, we need to incorporate these experiences into a child’s life from early on. Even two year olds can put their toys away and pour kibble into the pet’s bowl. By adolescence, they should be helping with just about every household task at some point. Yes–even if they are studying for SAT’S, taking AP’s and keeping up their GPAs.

Continue reading →

Can you ask questions that your teen wants to answer?

By Laura Kastner, Ph.D.

Today in my office, a 15 year old teen taunted his mom by saying, “Colton is my hero—he outran ‘The Man’!” She had been commenting on an article in our local paper in which I likened the barefoot bandit to a modern day Jesse James. Perfectly on cue, his provocative statement incited the mom to lecture about moral turpitude and the horrors of living a life of crime. Do you imagine that her son absorbed any moral lessons while he laughed in her face?

When your teen declares that marijuana should be legalized, college is a waste of time, or manners are stupid, how do you reply? Do you respond with comments about (and criticisms of) the particular topic at hand? Or do you take a few seconds and breaths for “getting to calm”, so that you can figure out the best approach for discussing important matters with your teen?

We called our book “Getting to Calm: Cool-headed strategies for parenting tweens and teens” because teens push parents’ emotional buttons so easily, frequently and intensely. When we are upset by our kids, we fall into the trap of reacting rather than responding wisely. Even though we know that negative responses—like criticism, sarcasm, lecturing, ridicule, contradiction, and dismissiveness—are likely to lead to blow-ups or shutdowns, they are common reactions when our children express ideas that make us worried about their health and welfare.

In my next series of articles posted here, I am going to describe some tools that parents can use with some of the classic challenges we face while parenting teenagers. The first tool to be discussed here addresses the situation in which a teen throws out an idea we think is hare-brained, if not potentially harmful. I call it the “Socratic Method” because it enhances analytic thinking, helps parents understand their teens’ internal worlds and avoids power struggles. Here’s how it works— Continue reading →

Conventional wisdom regarding temperament recommends that parents “work with your child’s temperament, not against it.” What this sage advice means is that you seek to understand your child’s inborn personality, accept its genetically-based limitations and cultivate its associated unique assets. The biological nature of temperament renders children blameless for certain unsavory tendencies they inherited, whether little Joey exhibits moody reclusiveness or a daredevil streak. As parents, we want to make the most of our kids’ personality strengths and minimize the potential harm of what could be weaknesses.

A shy, reactive child will be slow to warm up to new situations, need strong encouragement about participation in activities and thrive best in certain low-stress niches. His well-informed parent will understand that he needs firm nudges to join social groups but avoid overwhelming him with excessive expectations, especially in unfamiliar circumstances. The high-energy and thrill-seeking child will love activity, risk and stimulation. Her savvy parent will accept the chaos that accompanies her personality type and provide opportunities for her to explore her curiosity safely, learn to curb her excessive zeal and cope with limits.

Basic aspects of temperament endure from the cradle to the grave, but in between the role of nurturing is huge in shaping a child’s life. The introverted child may become a famous professor or a hermit, and the aggressive extrovert may become a successful entrepreneur or a con artist. Parent navigation plays a big (but not all-determining) role in the map-quest. Good and bad random events, neighborhood, school and financial resources also play large roles.

Continue reading →