Brain Based Parenting
Brain Based Parenting, The Boys Ranch Podcast for families.
We all know how hard being a parent is, and sometimes it feels like there are no good answers to the difficult questions families have when their kids are struggling.
Our goal each week will be to try and answer some of those tough questions utilizing the knowledge, experience, and professional training Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch has to offer.
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podcasts@calfarley.org
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Music:
"Shine" -Newsboys
CCS License No. 9402
Brain Based Parenting
Brain Builders: Achievement- Creating a Success Mindset for our Kids
We explore achievement as the third component of our Model of Leadership and Service, discussing how to foster confidence, build competence, and set appropriate goals for children who may identify more with failure than success.
Contact:
podcasts@calfarley.org
To Donate:
https://secure.calfarley.org/site/Donation2?3358.donation=form1&df_id=3358&mfc_pref=T
To Apply:
https://apply.workable.com/cal-farleys-boys-ranch/j/25E1226091/
For More Information about Cal Farley's Boys Ranch:
https://www.calfarley.org/
Music:
"Shine" -Newsboys
CCS License No. 9402
Welcome back, everyone and thank you for joining us today as we move through the next part of our Model of Leadership and Service Achievement. I'm joined again today by Michelle Meichetter, our Chief Program Officer. Hello. Suzanne Wright, the VP of Training and Intervention. Hello. And Mike Wilhelm, our Senior Chaplain, howdy. Before we get into it, let's start with our question of the day. So you guys ready for today's intellectually stimulating question?
Speaker 2:You bet.
Speaker 1:I can feel the excitement All right. So today's question is what would you say is your greatest non-work, non-family achievement? What is something cool or fun you've accomplished and want to brag a little bit about? For me, the thing that I would say is I completed a Ragnar race, and a Ragnar race is a 24-hour relay race where you run three miles, five miles and eight miles and you have a team of other people running the race too. It was the most grueling, horrible, amazing experience I think I've ever done, and I don't ever want to do another one, but it was fun.
Speaker 2:I guess mine would have to be a half marathon that I ran. That's been like six years ago, but I did complete it and I got the shirt, so that was something. And then I have also done goat yoga, which I highly recommend. And I've also done aerial yoga. So I wouldn't say I accomplished those things, but I did try those things so I would recommend those highly to everyone accomplished those things, but I did try those things, so I would recommend those highly to everyone.
Speaker 3:What's aero yoga, aerial, oh?
Speaker 2:aerial, yes, where you have silks that hang from the ceiling and you do yoga with them. Wow, yeah.
Speaker 3:Do they have aerial goat yoga?
Speaker 4:They should. Is there video evidence of that accomplishment?
Speaker 3:There's not video. No, top that, suzanne.
Speaker 4:Yeah Well, I was going to say that my accomplishment is much more sedentary. But I have wanted for years to know how to crochet, but I was never very good at it. And just in the last year I learned how to crochet a granny square, which changed the game, and now I feel like I can confidently say yes, I crochet. So that you know, that's just a small goal, but it took me years to be able to feel confident in accomplishing that.
Speaker 2:Wow yeah, I have not been able to do that, but you give me hope that maybe one day I could Well, our family used to show cattle, so I'm really kind of breaking the rule.
Speaker 3:You said a non-family achievement, but the best I could think of is we used to show cattle and we didn't do cow yoga but we did cow showing and we had the Grand Champion Steer at Denver at the National Western and the Grand Champion Steer at Louisville at the North American International Livestock Exposition. So we did cow showing.
Speaker 4:So that was really the cows accomplished next. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You've got to make the cows show them right. You've got to get those tails, just right.
Speaker 3:They did the work, we received the glory.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 1:All right, so let's continue talking about our model of leadership and service, and so far we've talked about safety and belonging, which for me are fairly easy to define and understand, but for some reason this seems a little bit more abstract.
Speaker 2:How would you guys define achievement? I think about it as exerting effort towards something that you want to complete or accomplish a goal, so taking steps to move in that direction of accomplishing a goal.
Speaker 1:So if someone doesn't have achievement, what would achievement struggles look like?
Speaker 2:I think you know it looks like not having much excitement or enthusiasm or confidence in yourself, maybe feeling like not as energetic about, you know, going to school or going to an event or any of those kinds of things, if you lack that feeling that you'd be able to meet a goal or achieve something in it.
Speaker 4:I think if you don't feel like you're able to achieve, you're less likely to attempt yes. So if I'm worried that I, for example, could not run a half marathon, then I would think why bother, why try?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so a kid being withdrawn could be a sign of a lack of achievement. True.
Speaker 2:Yeah, true.
Speaker 3:And I wonder too sometimes the kid that doesn't seem to be withdrawn and in despair. But if there could be a kid that's edgy— and a little thin-skinned and maybe sets off and rage easy, if there's not some shame around a lack of achievement and that makes for some touchiness and being insecure in some settings, do you think sometimes some of that kind of acting out could be from lack of achievement?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think probably those things go hand in hand, right, like lack of confidence in not achieving and then not achieving not helping you build confidence that you can do something else, so then not even trying, not even wanting to attempt, and so you can see a lot of behaviors around trying to avoid even being put in a position to attempt something.
Speaker 4:There was a comedian a few years ago that told you know a funny story about a young man who had to be in a spelling bee at school and he knew he wasn't going to do very well, so he misspelled the first word right off the bat so he could just sit down and check out for the rest of the spelling bee. So because he lacked a sense of achievement in that area, he wasn't even willing to try. He had, you know, the prediction that he would fail anyway. Yep.
Speaker 2:You know and I think that makes me think my own daughter has a lot of social anxiety about getting up in front of a group and she also qualified for spelling bee, and this was when she was in elementary school and she did not want to do it and we went back and forth and back and forth about it. It will be okay, this is why you can do it, all those kinds of of things. And so she did the exact same thing. She got up on the stage and she misspelled I won't say if it was purposeful or not the very first word and then got to sit down, but the achievement was her actually getting up on the stage, and so sometimes I think we confuse winning with achievement, and I think achievement can be very small steps that you take towards things, and so maybe I take back my definition of what that is.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I think that's really good insight, though, because in our culture, achievement equates with winning correct it's who made the highest grade or who came across the finish line first, or who shoved the best cow, but I mean, we don't always define small successes as achievement. But you know, when we are working with our kids here on campus, we are looking at very small steps towards the right direction and definitely claiming those as achievement.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, and I think the same thing for us as adults. Right, there's different, different days, different times in our lives when we can do better than other days, and some days, just showing up is an achievement, agreed.
Speaker 1:So what happens if a kid identifies more with failure than success? What can we do to change that template?
Speaker 2:I think that's really hard when you have not had much success, do not have much confidence to start something new or try something new. And it is really nice that we're lucky here. We have a lot of activities that maybe kids have never been exposed to, so they have no negative or positive feelings about it, and so it's a little easier maybe to enter into it because you're not already carrying around this belief that you can't do it or it's something that you won't be successful at, and so I think exposure to different things, not just the things over and over again that you're not good at. So sometimes school is not a big success, but you can find other avenues that help. You know do better in that area.
Speaker 2:so then it makes you feel like maybe I could do better in school and so, and I guess for adults too, I think it's you know, but having the confidence even to try takes a lot of adult support and encouragement and reassurance and unconditional acceptance, regardless of how you actually do.
Speaker 4:I think sometimes our residents are afraid to try new things you know they don't have any experience with that but also they don't want to fail in front of their peers. Right, and that adult support you mentioned is so important. I can remember my own daughter here on campus was terrified to be in a kayak, but the man in charge of that activity gave a safety briefing, you know, talked in detail, you know, led the children step by step by step through what would happen and what to expect and also participated with them and that made the difference. And you know, sometimes as adults we don't think that kids are listening or attending, but she came home and repeated that entire safety briefing to me in detail.
Speaker 4:you know, and I've shared that with that staff member, she was paying attention. It was important.
Speaker 3:Don't you think? For those same reasons, our ELP program out here is really plays an important role with achievement.
Speaker 4:It does and you might explain what our ELP program is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, experiential learning program. Where one, yeah, experiential learning program where one.
Speaker 3:The kids are in a setting where they can develop some competency with projects, robotics, computers, woodworking. They're in a smaller group. They're not in a large group where there's so much fear of exposure and incompetency so they could try new things. And then they're with just wonderful kid whisperer mentors that are wise and gentle and for sometimes the primary caregivers to get trying to push the kid out of the nest to try new things. Sometimes that can just get into a stuck point. But for that mentor there to come alongside a fresh voice gives the kids some space to try new things and it seems like for all those reasons it really works and kids come to life down there, don't you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. But that makes me think again about even as adults and staff. I can remember a staff member that had to do a training and got very, very unhinged right before the training, thinking that she wasn't going to be able to do it, and she panicked and said I don't think I can do this. And I said that's okay, you don't have to do it, somebody else can do it, it doesn't have to be you. And so for that day she opted out, but then, because that was okay and we moved on, the next time she was able to get up and do it and then she was able to do it, you know, several times very easily after that. But it's also that unconditional acceptance of it's okay if you can't do it today, but we're going to keep trying to help you get to that point.
Speaker 1:That's actually a really good segue to my next question. So if you set a goal for a child and you realize that they can't meet that goal, is it okay to reset that goal?
Speaker 2:realize that they can't meet that goal, is it okay to reset that goal? You know I really hate the adage never quit. I think it's really important to know when it's time to quit, and I wish I would have been taught that when I was younger that there are times, there are situations, there are relationships, there are things that it's okay to recalibrate and say you know what? This isn't what I thought it was going to be and this is not what. Something I need to do and so I definitely think that's something we need to help teach is that there are times you need to reassess the situation and see if it's something that you're going to be successful in or not, because it's not always just try harder, right? I think we get taught that if you just try harder, there's some sometimes that's not the case. You can try as hard as you want, it's not going to work out the way you want it to.
Speaker 4:I think it also matters if you, the adult, set that goal for a child or if the child had any input on that goal Right. And so when we talk about those goals, it's really vital to get the child's perspective and their input so that they have buy-in and they also are invested in that goal, and then, if that goal seems out of reach, you reassess.
Speaker 3:Great story on goals. We had a boy here that was about as big around as my index finger when he came and not very athletic and he went out for wrestling and he lost every match Right for maybe two years. I can't remember what his record was, but then he won a match and so he was one and whatever right. And at our devotional that Wednesday he shared his praise for the week is that he won a match and he said you know, I told coach I'm going to win state. And he said I told coach I'm going to win state. And he said you know, coach told me I need to have a more realistic goal. And I thought that and I could just imagine Coach Jones being very kind and helping him through that, mentoring, through that. But in the big picture this particular boy did develop confidence through the wrestling program. He didn't have a great record but he won some and became the athletics in his particular case, became a place where he did achieve and it helped give him a lot of confidence throughout.
Speaker 1:You know, just going on beyond Boys Ranch, so it's really us, as the adults, raising and lowering the bar, what the kid can actually achieve.
Speaker 4:Well, I think you raise and lower that bar as it's appropriate. So you know, my guess would be in that scenario that that Coach Jones would have told him, rather than focus on state, let's work on district Right, and so that so that those goals build towards the overall goal Right Sometimes we do set the bar too high and it's unrealistic and so that those goals build towards the overall goal right. Sometimes we do set the bar too high and it's unrealistic, and so we need to reevaluate that right. You don't tell a child who's failing. Your goal is to make straight A's. That's not reasonable, right, and so lowering the bar has a negative connotation. But maybe we just put that bar in a more reasonable place and then we can always raise it as it's appropriate, I think that's hard too, especially when you have someone who's motivated and says you know, I want to win state.
Speaker 2:We don't want to, you know, knock them down by saying I don't think that's realistic for you. You need to have something more realistic. But it is helpful to have that kind of, I think, guidance because you can really, you know, have the opposite effect if you set your goals too high, that you're not going to reach them, and so you need some buffering from the adults that have a little bit more hopefully reasonable view.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of interesting Sometimes when I see kids start to have achievement in an area, they also sometimes will struggle or they might be disobedient or something like that and the caregiver is going to might be tempted to take away that area where they are being successful as a consequence, to try and get them to comply. Do you feel like that's a good strategy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this goes so against the way probably all of us were raised and all of us were taught that you remove this as a punishment so that you can try to get better behavior. And I just think what we know is that when you're doing well in one area, that confidence, that achievement can carry over to other areas. And so when you're trying to help someone do better, removing something they're good at doesn't often help any of the situation at all, and then you take away that one area of confidence for them. That makes it more difficult for them to do well in the area you're wanting them to do well in. It's really more about building on that rather than taking it away.
Speaker 1:So it kind of backfires a lot of times.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love this question because, like Michelle said, it seems like the right answer to this is so counterintuitive. It goes against our instincts, it goes against our raising. But I was just in my Bible reading this morning when Paul's talking to a particular church at Corinth. He's trying to help them through some difficult things and sounds like they were off the rails in some regards. But then he makes this wonderful, wonderful point. He says that his authority is for building a podcast and say but yeah, whenever you're at the point of contact with the child, trying to make decisions and you're stuck in a rut, it can be difficult to figure out how to navigate this, can't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then that makes me think too the same way I'm with adults again is like if you have someone who's struggling and you told them you know what? We're not going to let you do the things that you're good at right now, you're only going to do the things that you're struggling in. We would never do that to the adult, but that makes sense to us, for children, for some reason, and so I always think when you flip it that way, then it doesn't. It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 4:I think, time we're frustrated with a child, that we tend to exert more control in an effort to get compliance. But when we look underneath that, it's usually driven by fear, our fear right that that child is going to fail in some way or that we are not being successful as parents. You know, but a lot of times that motivation to exert more control is really more about us than it is about them.
Speaker 1:I also wonder what happens when you take everything away, like I've heard it say. You know, freedom is just another word for having nothing left to lose, right? And if we take everything away and they have nothing good going on, then they do whatever they want, right, because they have that freedom to do that at that point.
Speaker 4:Well, and they've lost motivation. Yeah Again, if I can't do the one thing that I'm good at, I'm defeated right, and I don't have any sense of achievement. And so why try?
Speaker 2:And that kind of technique or mentality does lead to you just have to keep doing more and more and more, so you have to take doing more and more and more, so you have to take this away, take that away, and then pretty soon there's nothing left to take away, which, if it worked, you wouldn't have to get to that point, right? But that's what happens.
Speaker 1:So, when it comes to achievement, I've heard it said that competence leads to achievement. If so, what are some ways that we can help develop competence in children?
Speaker 4:I think you start out by determining what are they already good at? What you know every child has interests. Every child has something that they do well and you focus on those small things and build them into larger things and with some children you have to look a little harder to find out what is that interest or what is that competence right? So it may be that you know you did a great job of picking your clothes up and putting them in the laundry hamper, or you know the way you helped me with dinner tonight was really great. Thank you so much. You had a good attitude when you did that. You know you're focusing on the smaller things and you build towards the larger things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which makes me think about there needs to be an attuned adult who notices those things right, and so a lot of times our kids aren't able to tell you what their strengths are or maybe even what they like, and it takes those caring adults in the environment to be able to point those things out for them until they can see it themselves sure is helpful if there is a community in place, a child and if, if a caregiver is stuck and pretty isolated, this all becomes pretty difficult, doesn't it?
Speaker 3:but if for a charismatic adult that comes along and notices and is helpful and invites kids into something new, it seems like that, that can really open things up and free things up.
Speaker 3:I'm thinking of it happens out here all the time. I'm thinking about one particular case where we had a boy this was 10, 15 years ago had a boy come in from out of state and he shows up for one.
Speaker 3:We're doing a prayer ride tonight with a group and he came out for one of those and he had on an NBA tank top and some kind of tennis shoes and wasn't dressed for horses and he was so frightened and his eyes were as big as saucers and he went on that ride and it was scary to him. But there was a charismatic, caring adult on that ride that noticed him, talked him through it and that became point of competency for this particular young man. In just a few weeks he's working at the horse barn and to this day now he's a ranch hand cowboy and has great competency in this. But the change that happened in him is eyes that were as big as sausage, where you could see the fear on his face. He had this confidence and this peace once he had this place where he had achievement, this island of competency here at Boys Ranch.
Speaker 4:I think we referenced this when we talked about belonging, but it's helpful to build an intentional community for your child to, you know, to create opportunities for them to interact with other adults whom you trust, whom they can develop trust with right, and so that might be an aunt or a grandparent or a teacher, someone at church or who is involved in any other group that you participate in. But I always wanted my children to have connections with other adults so that if there was something they felt they could not share with me, they had a community of adults around them to share and support them. And those are the same adults who can help your child achieve, who can point out. Here are some talents, I see, or skills that you have, or you did this very well and I think that's part of it.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you all for joining us today. I hope you feel like you've achieved some sort of alignment listening to us and always remember you might have to loan out your frontal lobe today. Just make sure you remember to get them back.
