Tip of the Month
December 2011
Dear OSSWA members, here is the December 2011 Tips of the Month, courtesy of Demitra Turner and Megan Lehnert. Below you will find very helpful tips for working with children this holiday season from Behavior Coach Dennis Bumgarner, ACSW, LCSW.
When is a Gift Not a Gift?
As the holiday shopping season approaches, it is a good time to give some thought to the implications of gift-buying for our children.
From the standpoint of our children’s mental and emotional health, it is instructive to note that people in modern, industrialized, and technological societies have much higher depression rates than people in less-developed countries.
Depression is one of the “afflictions of civilization.” Thus it appears that the more children have in the way of material things, the less content they are. Conversely and seemingly paradoxically, the less they have the more content they happen to be. Therefore, giving kids too much is one of the pathways to depression.
So, during the holiday season, how might you best address the concern of material possessions and the emotional health of your children? Here are some guidelines:
1. Try to see that your children receive something from their gift list.
2. Make sure they don’t get an item from their list, thus giving them the opportunity to learn to manage disappointment.
3. Allow them access to a certain amount, but not all, of their toys at the same time. Keep some out of reach on a high closet shelf or in the attic. When they want one of the shelved items, they must exchange it for one they currently have access to.
4. Use the holiday season to help them develop the life skills of empathy and altruism by donating some of their less-frequently-used toys others less fortunate than they.
Grit: An Essential Component of Success
Recent studies have looked at groups of students who have completed college and those who have dropped out, in an attempt to identify the personal qualities that explain the difference between the two groups. The findings are instructive.
The qualities that predict for success are not, as one might expect, good grades, elevated SAT scores, or high IQ’s. The students who persisted in college and went on to graduate were not necessarily the ones who had initially excelled academically, but
rather the ones who displayed character strengths like persistence, frustration tolerance, and optimism.
The successful students were the ones who rebounded from a bad experience and resolved to do better next time; recovered from a bad test grade with a determination to improve; restrained the urge to go out and have fun and instead study at home. These characteristics have come to be known as grit.
The key components of grit have been identified as zest, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism and curiosity. Taken together, they predict that a child is more likely to graduate from high school, go to college, complete college, and find a good job. The presence of these qualities also suggests that the young person is more likely to eventually marry and have a family.
In fact, the personal quality of self-control predicts more reliably for academic success than a high IQ. And key to this success is for them to experience some degree of struggle in their lives, to learn that they can overcome hardship or frustration, pull themselves through a crisis, and overcome their personal shortcomings.
Thus it appears that what kids need more than anything is a little adversity; some challenge, some hardship that they can overcome so that they can discover their capabilities.
As parents or those who work with children, it becomes our responsibility to not rescue kids when we see them struggle. Instead, we need to allow them the opportunity to develop the personal capability that flows from these grit-building struggles and contributes to their eventual success.
Dennis Bumgarner, ACSW, LCSW
The Behavior Coach
info@behavior-coach.com
www.behavior-coach.com