Nip in the Bud® Podcast - The children's mental health charity

Nip in the bud nuggets with Dr Bettina Hohnen - Friendships, social connections, online world, and executive functions.

• Nip in the Bud Children's Mental Charity

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This clip is from my podcast with Dr Bettina Hohnan - Neurodiversity: how to parent and educate neurodiverse brains effectively.

In these short podcast clips, we offer nuggets of information from our longer podcasts that give advice and quick tips to help you as teachers recognise children’s needs and respond more efficiently, empowering you to adapt teaching effectively.

In this clip we talk about helping our children in their friendships and social connections and the challenges of screens and the online landscape.

We also look at the silent skills that make up our executive functioning. We learn why a child may respond in a certain way to something and how as a parent or carer we can re-frame this as a skills deficit rather than as naughty behaviour. This nugget is packed full of ideas and strategies for you to try out to help maintain a positive relationship with your child.

Dr Bettina Hohnen is  also partnering with Nip in the Bud to do vlogs  answering your questions and sharing further advice.

Dr Bettina Hohnen website (including links to her books:
The Incredible Teenage Brain by Bettina Hohnen, Jane Gilmour and Tara Murphy
How to have incredible conversations with your child by Jane Gilmour and Bettina Hohnen
https://drbettinahohnen.com/

Smart but Scattered: The revolutionary "Executive Skills' approach to helping kids reach their potential by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare
https://www.smartbutscatteredkids.com/

General parenting books recommended by Dr Hohnen include the following`;
Good inside by Dr Becky Kennedy 
The book you wish your parents had read by Philippa Perry

Please follow Dr Bettina Hohnen on social media for tips and ideas about strengthening relationships with your kids
Instagram: drbettinahohnen
Twitter: bettinahohnen

Nip in the Bud - Where to get help

https://nipinthebud.org/where-to-get-help/



“In these short podcast clips, we offer nuggets of information from our longer podcasts that give advice and quick tips to help you as parents and carers recognize your children's needs and respond more efficiently, empowering you to better navigate the challenges of parenting. This clip is from my podcast with Dr. Bettina Hohnan, Neurodiversity, How to parent and educate neurodiverse brains effectively. In this clip, we talk about helping our children in their friendships and social connections and the challenges of screens and the online landscape.

We also look at the silent skills that make up our executive functioning. We learn why a child may respond in a certain way to something and how as a parent or carer, we can reframe this as a skills deficit rather than as naughty behaviour. This nugget is packed full of ideas and strategies for you to try out to help maintain a positive relationship with your child.

Parents need to hold in mind all the kind of developmental tasks, what's important to be a thriving person and one of the things that's important to be a thriving and engaged person is to be connecting with other people. You know, kids need to have friends, it's essential that they are socially connected. If that is not happening, then I do think it's up to parents to go again with a very curious stance, I wonder what's really going on.

And that might be when they need a little bit more of a push. So I think it is you're a balancer in a way as a parent, you're a balancer in so many ways, you're always trying to work out, okay, I know that this is what kids need, I know this is what's happening for them developmentally. So where do I need to kind of accommodate a little bit more for them?

And sometimes kids do need accommodation. You know, sometimes normal's everyday school is a little bit too much for a young person to cope with for whatever reason. So you want to make adjustments.

And sometimes it's a bit like, actually, I've got to just push you out a little bit more because I think you're retreating. And I don't think that retreating is helpful for your development.

There's a way that a lot of young children and teens are retreating into their games and gaming and creating friends. So I've had conversations with, you know, late primary, early secondary age, and they'll say, I've got hundreds of friends, but they're online. What's your thinking around that?

Is that equal to having the friendships that you're talking about, the social friendships?

This is really tricky. And it's such a big thing for this generation of parents is screens. And I think we have been peddling madly as adults over the last five to ten years, five years.

“I mean, it's changing all the time to work out how to manage it. For some young people, there is a lot of social connection that goes on online. And particularly, there is a bit of a gender difference here, because I think for some boys in particular, they do socially connect online.


And somehow it's easier for them, because it gets rid of some of the, you know, the face-to-face stuff, the eye contact or all that stuff that can be quite overwhelming. So I think some of it is important. I think we have to keep that in the bracket of they are socially connecting.

But if that's all they're doing, that's not good for them. So again, it is, it is being a balance. I mean, I think screen time is a big thing that's been talked about.

But the advice now about, it's not so much about screen time per se. It's about saying, is the child engaged in life in other ways? So for example, are they sleeping?

Are they eating? Are they moving? Moving exercises become the biggest thing that people are talking about now.

People talk about sitting down as being like the next smoking for this generation. Are they, you know, engaging with their friends and seeing their friends in real life? And are they engaged academically and having, you know, having time with their family?

So you could almost have that list and you have that list next to you. And maybe you do a little monitor in a week and you'd say, okay, or in a day, how much are they doing that? And then that will give you an idea about actually this bit's missing from their lives.

So it's not about making screens all bad, but sometimes screens will replace something that is essential for a kid's development.

I really like the idea of having a holistic view, writing a checklist and using that checklist as a parent to help you see where the balance is and help you then know how you need to react and respond. Can you tell us a little bit about what's meant by executive functions and why that's an important area to understand with regards to the work that you do?

Yeah. So, executive functions are housed in the frontal lobes of the brain. There are these silent skills that enable us to manage everyday life.

So it's analogy is that they're like the conductor in the orchestra. They tell the bit of the brain, the rest of the brain, when to start, when to stop. You know, oh, it's not the right time to say that thing at the right now.

How to plan, how to organize, how to manage our emotions. And they are developing over these 25 years. And actually that's the last bit of the brain to develop, is these executive functions.

The reason that I use this model, and that I think it's so powerful, is because I think often we are mislabeling behavior in children. And if we use this framework of executive functions, we understand that often it's a skill that a child is struggling with, rather than it being to do with their character or their intelligence or their attitude. It's actually a skill problem.

We identify what the skill is and then we can help to teach them the skill. So, for example, if you have a child, there's a lot of behaviors that we can reframe using this model. Let's think about a child who they're in a football game and they think, you know, the referee has blown a whistle against them or something and they shout out, you know, they shout at the referee.

I hate you or whatever they say, something worse than that. Now, we might say, there's a rude child, I have to tell my child that they can't do that. Or we might say, that's the child's response inhibition.

Actually, the frontal lobes need to engage in that moment and say to the child, not now, no, don't say that. That's the wrong thing to say. So we say, we can completely reframe it as a skills deficit rather than something intentional.

Let's give another example. You say to your child, can you go upstairs and get ready? You know, I need you to get your, you know, your hat and get, don't forget your gloves because it's cold, and just clean your teeth before you come downstairs, and they come downstairs and they have forgotten their gloves.

We might say, oh my goodness, will you listen? Or we might say, that's a working memory difficulty. I think your working memory let you down there, and so you forgot one of the things that was happening.

Now, it always, as you can tell, assumes the best of the child, but it also gives the child a way of doing it next time. So rather than just getting cross and going, can you try harder? You say, ah, so when I give you three things to do, let's think about a way in which we can help you remember.

Or next time you feel really upset by what the referee did, you know, sometimes referees do make a bad call. Next time, why don't we try this? And you give them a little strategy to do it.

So it's building up these skills, it's setting them up for life, and it's keeping in this positive relationship and having the best intention for your child. And actually, it's so powerful, I even now work with a lot of adults who will be struggling somehow in their lives. And you can reframe what's happening for them as an executive function problem.

They think, oh, it's not that I'm bad. It's not that I can't do this. It's a skill I just need to develop.

Or maybe I need a little strategy. Maybe I need a bit of help with that. You know, this book that I'm writing, you know, I struggle a bit with the time management.

So I've got somebody on board who's helping me with the time management. It doesn't mean I'm not intelligent. It just means that that's a skill that's a bit weaker for me and I'm still working on it, but I need a bit of extra help.

So again, as adults who care for children, whether we're talking parents or educationalists, it's about, again, detaching the behaviors and seeing what's lying beneath it and thinking, OK, how can I teach? How can I support? How can I look at this differently so that they can learn a different way next time?

Yeah, exactly. And it's incredibly powerful. I mean, one thing that comes up a lot for me in my work is kids who struggle with flexibility.

So flexibility is one of the executive functions. And that means it's a kid who, when something changes and they can't do what they want to do, they fall to the floor and they are all over the place. So you say, OK, you know, we've been, this is one kid I've been working with who needs to take some vitamins and she is really struggling with her flexibility because she'll take the pink one but she won't take the green one.

And so rather than saying, just come on or getting cross or making a character interpretation of that, we're saying I think flexibility is getting in your way. Let's think about another time when you've been really flexible. So I noticed that yesterday when the new teacher came in and the teacher that you love wasn't there, you were able to be so flexible and just say, okay, it's different.

It's not what I was expecting, but I managed it. So kids will be using these skills in some context. And then you can say, how can we help you in your flexibility with taking this other pill?

It literally has changed this kid. Now she's able to do that. But she was also struggling with going to restaurants when she didn't know what the food was.

So those kinds of things, which are so frustrating for everyday life, you reframe it and you have this new vocabulary, this new language to talk to a young person about what's happening. It's much more compassionate. It's a bit like, I see you're struggling.

And it's also building resilience for the future because it gives them a pathway for how might I do this? How might I get better at this?

Is there like a finite list of executive functions?

Yeah, there's a great book called Smart But Scattered, which I would recommend by Peg Dawson.

Okay, we'll put that in the show notes as well at the end. Tell us a bit about that.

Yeah, I mean, it's really about these, you know, kids, I mean, often kids who they might get a diagnosis of ADHD because the executive functions is a core difficulty underlying in ADHD, the core kind of cognitive difficulty. But these kids who are super smart, but they kind of leave this trail behind them, they're always forgetting things and losing things, and they can't manage their time, and all of the executive function skills. So the book Smart But Scattered, I mean, just if you suggest that to a parent who's got a kid like that, they will smile and go, that's my kid.

So it's really good. I mean, I'm also writing, this is the project, crazily, I'm writing a book about executive function skills and struggling with my executive function skills as I'm writing it. But trying to write about it as well in a way to embed this approach in family life.

There's a program called Activated Learning that's developed from Canada, which is embedding an executive function awareness in classrooms. So it's becoming more and more well-known.

Could you let us know what you think how parents and teachers can support children through mindset, through internal motivation, through getting children to see the world and themselves within the world in a more positive light.

So there's a lot of research about the importance of our beliefs about things and its impact on our behavior, even on how our body functions. Growth mindset and fixed mindset is an idea that is quite well known. This idea that if we have a fixed mindset, we have this idea that I am intelligent or I'm not intelligent and it's very fixed and it affects our behaviour.

But if we can have an idea about a growth mindset, which is the idea that the more I do something, the better I will become at it. If I keep going with something that I'm struggling with, I will get better.

Even if we're talking about an executive function like flexibility.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That is how the brain works. The way we get good at things is by doing them again and again and again, so it really fits with the neuroscience.

But it has a really big impact on a person's engagement with a task, obviously. If you think, I just tried this thing, I went and gave a public speech for the first time, I was rubbish, I'm not good at public speaking, you're not going to try again. If you think that was the first time I did it, obviously, yeah, there were a few things that I was struggling with, I need to just do it again, and then I'll get better and better and better.

So that's been brilliant. They came from Carol's work in the States. It's been very, very powerful.

In a way, the executive function approach really adds on to that. Because I think one of the downsides to the growth mindset was that kids would be told, you can do it, just try harder. Go on, do a bit more, you can do it, just try harder.

But it became a bit of a pressure for kids. Well, I'm trying, I'm trying, and I'm sitting in my room and I'm revising and I'm still not doing well. So the executive function approach puts a bit of meat behind it and says, I know that you're trying, but I wonder what strategies you're using.

I wonder if the strategies you're using are the best ones for you. There was a young person that I'm working with. She's 17, a brilliant young girl who recently got diagnosed with ADHD.

She said this thing to me the other day because she's really struggled with stress all her life. She said, I read the other day that actually a little bit of stress can be good for you. If you have too much stress, you go over the edge.

And it was really quite powerful for her because there is this research about stress mindset. So the idea of stress, the word stress has a bad name. We think about stress and we think don't do it anymore.

It's bad for you. It's going to cause physical health difficulties. We need to stop it.

But actually, that's not true. In order to do anything well, we need a little bit of stress to get us to the point where we're energized. But if we have too much stress, we fall off the other end and then it's impossible for us to do anything.

So again, this is a very important area of research because what they've done is work with young people and said, you know, stress about this stress mindset idea. A little bit of stress is good. Too much is over the top.

And that helps young people to say, OK, actually that feeling in my tummy, those butterflies, a little bit of it is a good thing. I'm actually going to give my peak performance when I've got a bit of stress. So that's the mindset, the way in which we see and understand what's going on inside us.

Our beliefs about that is very powerful in helping us to keep engaged and to use that energy in a positive way.

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