Transcript: Dynell's Pop-Up Podcast #101
5 Things You Can Do To Help Your Teen Turn In Their Assignments Without Losing Your Mind or Taking Over - Part 2
Welcome to my Pop Up Podcast. I’m Dynell Garron, educational therapist helping teens who have anxiety, depression, or ADHD graduate and helping their parents find simple ways to support them in school, hold them accountable, and maintain their connection.
It wasn’t too long ago that I was floundering, devastated by my son’s struggles with school and mental health, and I felt completely at a loss. Fast forward past many years, tears, blow ups, and shut downs, and you’ll see the confident, competent young man who knows who he is, who takes good care of himself most of the time, and who still doesn’t like school, but knows how to navigate it without being overwhelmed.
And, If you evesdropped on our conversations today, you would mostly hear - connection, respect and a real partnership. It’s been a journey and I’m here to share with what has worked for us and and what works for our clients.
If you are parenting a teen who has a diagnosis of ADHD, anxiety, or depression, and you’re absolutely determined to give your teen every possible opportunity to succeed in school and trying desperately to understand and meet their needs, you are in the right place.
My goal is to give you concrete, actionable steps that you can implement right away to support your teen in school and to relax a bit so you can enjoy parenting this special young person whom you love with every fiber of yourr being. So, wherever you are listening from, welcome. Let’s jump in.
Hi. Welcome back. In the last podcast, we talked about three things you can do to help your teen turn in their assignments. And if you haven't listened to that, I'll put a link in the show notes for you. Today we're going to cover the last two tips. Tip number four has been a game changer for me as a parent.
My tip is let's stop solving problems for our teens. Instead, let's problem solve with them. Now, you're probably rolling your eyes and saying Duh, or, yeah, right, sure. But let me share with you what has worked for our clients. Every week I have breakthrough calls with parents and teens.
And a breakthrough call last about 45 minutes to an hour. And it's a conversation I have with families to really see if we are a good fit to work together. I use the time to really understand what's going on in school. So one of the things I hear a lot from parents is something along the lines of, look, my kid is so disorganized.
I find crumpled papers in the bottom of the backpack. Or she forgets to bring home the assignment. Or he does the work but doesn't turn it in. And there's a lot of talk about color coded folders with matching notebooks or whiteboards that are gathering dust. Does this resonate with you?
And on the call, when I ask what the student has suggested, I get an exasperated sigh, and the parent will say something like, she doesn't care about this. He doesn't have any idea because he always says he doesn't know. Well, here's what I've learned. Your teen is mostly right.
They don't know because we usually ask this question out of context. So let me tell you what I mean.
Imagine being on vacation in the Bahamas, and you're by the pool looking good. You have your Bahama Mama drink, and the water is just beautiful, and you are so relaxed. You get a call from your neighbor asking you for your blueberry muffin recipe. Does that call seem out of context?
It's the same thing with our teens. They're chilling or they're very aroused, maybe having a heated argument with you or feeling embarrassed because they can't keep it together because, you know, these are not the calmest conversations we have. And then we turn to them and demand a solution. Well, you might as well ask them for their blueberry muffin recipe, because they don't have a reference point in their mind.
So what do you do? You invite them to problem solve with you and ask your young person to walk you through their day. And while they're walking you through their day, you're listening for clues to see what might be happening. So let me give you an example to illustrate what I mean.
My son went to a new school in the fourth grade, and he kept losing his backpack. And I tried a thousand things, but nothing was working. So I finally said, Dude, walk me through your day. From the time you walk onto the school playground, where do you go next?
And then where do you go? And he kept walking me through his day. And every now and then I'd ask, oh, do you have your backpack with you right now? And so we traced his entire day. I understood what was going on and why it was happening, and I shared my thinking with him from a place of curiosity.
And he had this really slow grin and said, yeah, like he was starting to see the problem himself. So we were able to problem solve around that discovery, that AHA moment. I don't remember exactly what we did, but it worked because he was able to keep up with his backpack.
Let's take another pass at this. And this one is very relevant for many of our middle school students. I don't know what it is about middle school,
but we have a lot of kids who don't write down their assignments in their planners. Are you nodding your head? And my kid was in middle school, and he was supposed to write his assignments down, and his teacher was supposed to check them off. This was part of his accommodations.
Well, guess what? It didn't happen. Day after day. Empty planner. I'd make a big fuss. Eventually, we saw half written assignments in the planner. I gave him all of my solutions, and it didn't change a thing. So we traced his day. I went back to tell me what goes on in those moments when you blah, blah, blah.
What are you doing? What are you thinking? What are you most concerned about? And guess what? I found out that he felt rushed to get to his next class, so he would actually start writing the assignment. And because my son has writing difficulties, he was very slow. So in the middle of writing down an assignment, he got really concerned about being late for his next class.
And boom, the planner was shut stuffed in his backpack, and he's running to his next class. And now we can talk about the problem and not him. He this child is no longer the problem. So the conversation moved away from what he is or isn't doing to something that we could look at together with no heat.
And when I say no heat, I mean there's no strong emotions attached to it. We're just having a conversation. When we do this with our clients, we often hear about competing priorities. They're trying to get the assignment, and all they're feeling is rush, stress. Got to go.
How can you reshape your conversation with your young person? Maybe have them walk you through the day, and what you're listening for are indicators of why the problem exists. And I'm going to share this with you because, you know, we tend to take over so here's some language you might want to try.
I you might say something like, oh, you just showed me something. Can I share it with you? Or, you are brilliant, because I think you just uncovered what's going on. Can I tell you what I just heard? I mean, if you're a young person and you're hearing this kind of validation from your parents, how good would you feel?
And guess what? You both are still solving the problem. It just feels different. So by working with our teens in this way, we take something so big you never you need to why can't you? And we flip it so that it's not a character flaw, and the problem becomes so specific, so concrete that you guys can actually do something about it.
I know this works because every spring I receive text messages and pictures from parents who implemented a strategy we identified on a breakthrough call. They're not even our clients. And the way that we arrived at a workable strategy is by using the exact same process I just outlined with you.
On that call, I asked enough questions in a neutral tone to identify a pattern, and then I reflected it back to the young person as a small external problem to solve. And then everyone on the phone started brainstorming solutions, and they picked one to try. So this process really does work.
All right, tip number four help your young person come up with their own solutions. Try to put your young person back into the actual school environment in their mind. Before we ask them to problem solve, let's try not to ask them to identify a solution out of context. Narrow the focus of the problem so it becomes very, very clear and concrete, and then share your observations, but giving them credit for the discovery.
And help your young person feel good about making one small Tweak.
Tip number five. Now, this really speaks to my heart, because I see so many young people get derailed because of this. And I'm going to go out on a limb here, and I'm going to say that outside of having a debilitating mental health episode, knowledge gaps are the primary reasons our teens become demoralized and disengaged.
I use the term knowledge gap to describe the difference between what the teacher is teaching and what your student knows. So by the very nature of learning, our kids are going to have knowledge gaps because they don't know everything and they're not supposed to. Unfortunately, teens who have anxiety, depression, or ADHD have a lot of knowledge gaps because they're either not paying attention at a critical time, so they're missing some information, or they struggle with working memory, which makes it really difficult.
Multistep instructions. It's also harder to hold critical information in mind while they're working, and that's the information you need for science, math, and writing. Also, weak executive functions make it hard for teens to regulate their emotions, stay motivated, and maintain their focus when they are outside of their comfort zone.
And most learning occurs outside of one's comfort going.
I'm going to add one. More. Wrinkled teens who have ADHD hear negative comments eight times more frequently than neurotypical teens. So there is a lot to unpack here when we are talking about helping our teens acknowledge and cope with their knowledge gaps. Now, there is good news. You have such an important role here.
Adults can do a lot to change this dynamic, and everyone should normalize knowledge gaps. There is just no way for students to know and understand everything they hear the very first time they hear it. It's a very unrealistic expectation. So let's talk out loud about how uncomfortable it is having to learn something new.
Talk about how insecure you've felt being in that situation, how hard it is to admit when you don't know something, and more importantly, what steps you take and what you say to yourself to keep moving, even when it feels weird, even when you hate not knowing. I still make it a point to share my vulnerabilities and insecurities with my son.
One time, I remember I didn't meet my goals, and I had a coaching call on speaker within earshot of him so that he could overhear the conversation. He came to me later and we actually talked about it, and it was great that he could hear me admit my mistakes and have someone coach me through them.
So can you or other adults in your home talk about how good it feels to finish something important, even if you made a mistake or how proud you are that you did it, even when you weren't 100% sure that it would turn out okay? Maybe you're nervous about an upcoming presentation, and you could talk about that.
Do you see where I'm going here? The message to our teens is that we are human. Learning is not easy. And I feel so passionately about this, because we have got to counter the unspoken narrative that is running through most of our teens heads. And that is something like, I don't understand it.
I should understand it, therefore, because I don't. I'm dumb. I'm stupid. I'm the only one who doesn't get it. I'm ashamed. I'm embarrassed. The more that we can model our growing pains, the more readily our teens will be able to accept own. And this is another reason why group coaching is so good for teens, because.
They get to see that they're not the only one struggling with some of these issues.
The other thing we can do is help our young people articulate their knowledge gap. I want them to say, this is what I know. This is what I kind of know. And this is where I'm totally lost. I mean, how many of our young people could truly feel comfortable admitting they're lost?
Not many. But this is what we need them to be able to do. And this is one of my missions. I have several missions in life, but this is one of them. I need all of us to work together to change this dynamic. Because the stories our teens are telling themselves when they don't have an answer or when they don't have the right answer, their stories are creating so much suffering.
And it just breaks my heart when I see a young person so beaten down. And I'm going to take this one step further. If a young person has been living with this false label for many years, this label of I'm dumb, I'm stupid, I'm not good at school, I'm whatever, and if this young person has experienced failure after failure, then guess what?
Words barely matter.
I can talk to a young person who's in this situation about their gifts, about their possibilities, about the fact that I see something else. I can talk to them until I am blue in the face. But they will not believe it is possible for them until they have a different experience that challenges their internal view.
And this is why I'm so passionate, because this is what saves our kids. I see it time and time again when we strip away all that external crap, and when we help a young person have a different identity that comes from their experiencing success, it changes the trajectory. It really does.
So in our programs and our trainings, we don't spend a lot of time with accolades and compliments. We work really, really hard to give teens a new experience that they can reflect upon and refer back to again and again. This is what changes outcomes for kids. And this is why I love this work.
And this is why I'm so grateful that you're listening to this podcast, because you can do this tonight. Another way that we normalize knowledge gaps is we teach our teens a five step learning process to actively learn any subject. And guess what step four is. Of the five steps, step four is reflect.
Identify what you know, identify what you think you know, and identify where you're lost. And of course, step five is reteach, so we don't leave them hanging. But the purpose of doing this is to have so much repetition. A knowledge gap is no longer a big, scary thing. It's step four, a five step process.
No more, no less. So we shift students. Perspective of the knowledge gap by embedding it into a learning routine that students perform over and over to the point where they start to expect and look for their knowledge gaps. And my goal is to stop the suffering that our kids experience because of the stories they are telling themselves about this pesky little knowledge gap.
That's all it is. It no bigger than a GNAT that needs to be waved away. One more thing, if I may. I hear from a lot of parents how frustrated you are because your teen won't ask for help. And if this is you, I'd like to offer just a few suggestions because it is related.
So if we look at the knowledge gap through the eyes of a young person who already feels vulnerable, misunderstood, who is really uncomfortable not knowing and has low self confidence when it comes to school, I'd say it takes a lot of courage for this young person to ask for help.
And so we teach our teens a three step process, and I want you to have it so that you can implement it when your teen needs it. And it's super simple. What we teach our young people to say is, mr. Brown, I am really clear about X. I don't understand why can you explain it?
That's it super simple. Let's break it down. We start from a place of strength so that our young people are confident in having the conversation. So, Mr. Brown, I'm clear about X. That's the strength. This is what I know. Then we explain the knowledge gap. I don't understand why actually explaining the knowledge gap and then make a request.
Can you fill in the blank? Explain it, illustrate it, talk me through it, whatever that needs to be. Your work will be in helping your young person clarify what they don't understand, because it needs to be very specific and very concrete so they can articulate it.
All right, I'm going to recap tip number four help your young person come up with their own solution and feel good about making one small tweak always externalize the problem so you can both look at it together with no heat. Tip number five help your baby deal with those knowledge gaps by normalizing them, by showing your vulnerabilities and giving them opportunities to have new experiences that will challenge their negative self image.
Two resources are definitely available to you, and I'm going to put the links to them in the show notes. The first one is the free guide five tips to help your teen turn in assignments on time without losing your mind or taking over. And the second resource is our Learning Strategies Card Deck, which teaches the five step learning routine that I mentioned earlier.
And I'll put the link to that resource in the show notes as well.
I hope you find this information helpful. And you can download the X which BENEFITS. I’ll put the link in the show notes so you can grab it right away.
Go to my facebook page, Dynell ET and let me know what you think. And, also what information would be most helpful for you. I really want you and your teen to have a better school year!@ Thanks for tuning it.
