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Author: Bonnie Gonzalez

  • Teach Your Kids to Fail Forward

    Teach Your Kids to Fail Forward

    Bonnie Gonzalez current course offering

    My vivid memories from elementary school are the days we got tests back.  As the teacher walked slowly around the room, we all tried to catch a glimpse of her face as she carefully put the tests face down on our desks.  Fear of failure was the overwhelming emotion we felt as we quickly flipped the test over and glanced at the first page, looking just long enough to see the grade written in red marker.  Of course, we didn’t want anyone else to see the grade, just in case it was bad.  “Bad,” that was the operative word.  If the grade was low, then it meant I was dumb or at the very least not smart enough to earn a good grade in that subject.  Of all of the adjectives associated with failure, “bad” was the most profound.  Even our parents knew that failure was bad.

    But then I grew older and I learned that important, intelligent people like Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and athletes like John McEnroe (the tennis player who won the most matches in his career) all experienced significant failures. The word “failure” took on a new meaning.  It became something that could happen to successful, intelligent people.

    In recent years failure has taken on a more positive meaning.  Researchers now know failure is something humans can learn from—it is considered a key path to healthy intellectual growth.  In the words of growth mindset icon Carol Dweck, “Learning how to cope with failure can lead to humility, adaptation, and resiliency.”

    But I have to ask myself, if failure is so important, then what happens to those of us who fear failure?  And what happens to our children, influenced by our fears. Recent research into the concept of failure has shown that many of us who fear failure also have what is known as a fixed mindset. We see our failures as indicators that we don’t have what it takes to succeed.  The other view, as identified by psychologist Carol Dweck, is a growth mindset. We see failure as a chance for growth, where learning can be enhanced.

    Two sides of the same coin, summed up by Winston Churchill in his quote, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”  Yes, according to this view failure is something positive and those of us from the fixed mindset generation must not only accept but even embrace the new definition.  Even the biological evidence supports the finding that having a growth mindset is beneficial.  Measuring brain waves at the Moser Psychophysiology Lab, Hans Schroder has observed that those who focus on trying to figure out a mistake, rather than fearfully avoiding it, quickly improve on tasks that require accuracy.  According to Schroder, glossing over mistakes or shying away from them undermine our growth potential.

    As homeschool parents, we can help our children view mistakes and failures in a new, more positive light.  West Point Academy strategist Richard Bard suggests using an Action Review Approach. This includes asking the following question about a failure:

    • What actually happened?
    • What are three things that could have gone better?
    • What are three things that I did well?

    Helping kids identify and evaluate failure, rather than fearing it, will improve their character, intellectual growth, and psychological well-being.

    Bonnie Gonzalez has 36 years of experience as a licensed counselor and is passionate about helping families apply the latest research in their home schools. She teaches Introduction to Psychology, Intro to Sociology, and a series of mini-courses related to a positive psychology. See her classes here.

    References

    Hans S. Schroder, Megan E. Fisher, Yanli Lin, Sharon L. Lo, Judith H. Danovitch, Jason S. Moser. Neural evidence for enhanced attention to mistakes among school-aged children with a growth mindset. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2017; 24: 42 DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2017.01.00
  • Training the Adolescent Brain

    Training the Adolescent Brain

    Bonnie Gonzalez’s current course offering

    As a professional counselor, teacher, anhttp://debrabell.com/product/secrets-of-success-getting-things-done-for-teens/d former homeschool parent, I want to give you some information which will help you to navigate the emotional angst that often comes with homeschooling teens.

    Teenage Angst and the Brain

    As a homeschooling parent, you have been the market leader in the field of parenting – an expert at understanding the personality and learning style of your children. But now at the onset of adolescence, “the times they are a changing.”  Teens are a “different animal” and it’s a  “whole new ballgame.” From both a psychological and parenting perspective we have many theories about why our kids are suddenly risk takers, judgement-impaired, contrary, and unpredictable.  For years we’ve heard that teen behavior is a result of early childhood experiences, peer pressure, hormones, and sometimes bad parenting.  But the latest research suggests another cause—structural changes in a teenager’s brain may largely be to blame for the chaos.

    Without going into a lot of technical terminology, recent studies have discovered that the brain does the bulk of it’s maturing between the ages of 12 and 20 (and in boys this may even extend into the mid 20’s).  The prefrontal cortex, where most of our ability to calm our emotions and make rational decisions occurs is the slowest part of the brain to develop.  So, yes, there may be a reason for the irrational behavior you are seeing in your adolescent son or daughter.

    Wiring Through Homeschooling

    Okay, so what does this mean to you, as the homeschooling parent of this wildly emotional, and often irrational, growing teen?  First, there is some good news.  Positive things such as sports, music, school achievement, and responsibility can be “wired” into that changing adolescent brain, by you as the parent and teacher.  There is lots of room for change and second chances abound during this prefrontal expansion.  The bad news is that if those teen years are filled with anger and alienation, these characteristics may too, get “set in stone.”  Adolescence is an important time, and you have the ability to guide your teen through this time.

    My caution to you is this:  in this time of unpresedented brain development, many new and unpredictable thoughts and behaviors can arise.  Often emotions and actions can outrun judgement capabilities, just like they did in early childhood.  Teens find it difficult to process emotions such as anger and fear; and their behavior in the midst of this emotional turmoil, can be maddening.  But remember, this behavior is not a character flaw, but rather simply a function of some confused wiring in the brain, which will eventually straighten out.  The goal is to respond to this behavior with responses which will allow the teen to become well-adjusted.    Remember the impulsiveness and risk-taking behavior are critical to growing up into an adult.

    (Thanks to Michael J. Bradley in his book, Yes, Your Teen Is Crazy, Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind, for some of the scientific content in this article. Photo credit: Affen Ajlfe)

    Bonnie Gonzalez has 36 years of experience as a counselor. She has taught high school and college classes and teaches an Intro to Psychology course and an Intro to Sociology course through Aim Academy.

  • Affiliation Motivation

    Around this time each year, the students in my Psychology Class study the concept of motivation – why we do what we do.  We explore the motivations behind hunger, thirst, achievement and one of my personal favorites, the need to affiliate.  The word ‘affiliation’ is not one that we use often, so let me explain its meaning.  To affiliate means that we “flock together”.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that we form a close, lasting relationship, but it does mean that we have a need to be with others.  Affiliation is a type of social motivation.  The need to belong and the need for emotional intimacy are the other components of this type of motivation. 

    As children and as adults we all require a certain amount of quality contact with others to feel good.  In fact, if we deprive others of this social contact using punishments like solitary confinement it can cause some serious problems such as heart disease, depression, and premature death.  When we are rejected socially our brains actually respond in the same way as when we are experiencing physical pain.

    We form bonds quickly, even when we don’t need to.  I am a person who frequently talks to others while waiting in line (my kids were always embarrassed when I did that).   I am not sure why I do this, but I suppose it has to do with a shared experience of not having anything else to do while waiting, or just being miserable that I am wasting my time in this line – misery loves company!  Others I know form bonds with people during an elevator ride in the hospital or while riding up to a job interview. Or, on the long ride down, when you’re not sure if you “landed the job”.  We seem to be drawn to these conversations.   You don’t have to look very far to see that we are programmed to affiliate with others.

    One of the most famous psychological studies on the concept of affiliation was done by Stanley Schacter in 1959.  Working as a social psychology professor at Yale University, Schacter was interested in studying our motivation to be with other people in the same space.  He divided the students who volunteered for his experiment into two groups.  The first group was instructed by a severe, mean-tempered research assistance by the name of Dr. Zilstein who told them that they were going to be severely shocked during the experiment, and these shocks were going to be painful.  The other group met a “mild mannered” professor who told them that they would receive shocks that would feel no worse than a “tickling” on their hands.  The groups were then told that they had to wait for the experiment to begin.  They could choose to wait alone in a separate room or they could choose to wait together with others.  Where do you think the students in Dr. Zilstein’s group chose to wait?  You guess it, with others!  The moral of the story (experiment) in times of stress we prefer to be with others. 

    Although affiliation is important, we humans seem to need more than to just “hang out” with each other.  Most of us are also looking to belong, feel as if we are a part of a group.  This belonging seems to involve two important factors:  frequently positive interactions with others (doing things together that are fun!!), and a stable, enduring relationship (meeting in an elevator one time just isn’t the same as an enduring friendship).  Maintaining close personal relationships where we feel like we belong is probably the single most important factor in human happiness and life satisfaction.  We need to be needed and feel that we belong. 

    If the need to belong is not fulfilled and we feel rejected by others we can experience severe emotional turmoil.  Believe it or not, this distress can even be felt when we are rejected by a computer. When people are rejected by unknown internet partners while playing computer games, they actually change their behavior and even risk losing the game to ensure they are not rejected again.  Amazingly these same behaviors occur if people in research studies are told that they are playing against a computer and not other humans!!  We change our behavior to make sure the computer doesn’t reject us. What a powerful need we have for affiliation!

    I began this blog post talking about the students in my online psychology class.  As we study this concept of affiliation motivation, I always challenge them to think of their affiliations.  Are they engaging with others?  Do they feel needed and connected to people in their own lives? After all teens and young adults are one of the most vulnerable populations when it comes to feeling rejected and lonely.   Often in our class we begin discussing these connections, and my students begin to bond with one another.  If you think about it, our class actually fulfills the two components of belonging – weekly interactions (classes) that are fun (at least I think they are), and stable relationships (we meet for 8 months of class, and many students continue to stay in contact after the class has finished).   This leads me to believe that even internet class connections are ways to help our students form positive, and in some cases, long term bonds with others.  These classes help students fulfill important affiliation and belonging needs. 


    Bonnie Gonzalez has 36 years of experience as a counselor and is passionate about helping families apply the latest research in their home schools. She teaches Introduction to Psychology for Aim Academy as well as the Secrets of Success mini-course series. Her upcoming Secrets of Success summer course helps students learn how to persevere in the face of failure. You can learn more about the seven week course here.

  • GRIT: What Is It? Why Does It Matter?

    GRIT: What Is It? Why Does It Matter?

    GRIT is persevere in the face of failure;  getting back up when we fall; starting over when we fail.  It is a way of redefining success not simply by your talent or your intelligence, but by changing the way you think about failure and perseverance. Although not a skill that all of us are born with, grit can be learned.

    “A combination of passion and perseverance,” this is how Angela Duckworth, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania defines the concept of grit. Her book is the defining text on this topic.

    Bonnie Gonzalez offers some additional insight on this topic in the brief video below. She is offering a 7-week course focused on developing GRIT in students beginning in July.

  • Help Your Child Develop Grit

    Help Your Child Develop Grit

    If Grit was simply will power or self-control eventually most of us would be exhausted and there would be few of us who would be able to keep up with the work.  Although these characteristics are important, for the persistence needed to be gritty we need to develop a different strategy.  The strategy of consistently changing our habits.

    Will power and self-control are limited resources, and setting ourselves up for success involves doing something that is automatic and doesn’t draw on these limited resources.  If every morning I were to exercise only based on my will power, most mornings I would fall back into bed as a dismal failure.

    Habits are aspects that we can change with a minimal amount of effort since they require only an understanding of their components.  Habits exist because, according to Charles Duhigg the author of The Power of Habit, there is a cue, a routine and a reward. 

    For example, when you procrastinate it starts with:

    • A cue – I have so much work to do.
    • The routine is then that you find something else to do to delay the work
    • The reward is that you feel better in the moment because you found something else to do that made you uncomfortable.

    This behavior creates a “Habit loop”.  You feel better in the moment, but you still have the work to do. When you change a habit the cue and the reward stay the same – although it is important that you find out what really is rewarding you with a particular habit.

    What needs to change is the routine.

    The cue helps you see when you are about to fall into an old habit, and then what you need to do is to find a new routine. 

    Looking at the same example:

    • The cue is the stressful feeling you have when you have a lot of work
    • The new routine could be getting started the minute you experience the cue.
    • The reward is that you feel better only this time is will be for a longer period of time.
    • Changing habits is difficult.  Our brains are lazy and unless we deliberately create a new routine we will more than likely follow the old habit.  The good news is if you work hard at creating new routines, these become as automatic as the old bad habits once were.
    Download Debra Bell's Study Smart Student Toolkit

    Here are some specific tips to building new habits:

    1. Make it easy to engage in a new habit and hard to engage in an old habit.  In his book Before Happiness: Five Actionable Strategies to Create a Positive Path to Success, Shawn Achor writes about wanting to develop the habit of running more and watching less television.  In order to change his habit he took the batteries out of his remote control and slept in his running clothes. What could you do to help achieve a habit you wanted to create?  Move your phone out of the way to keep you from getting distracted, and leave your notes to study on the table beside your bed.
    2. Be specific and don’t try to change more than one habit at a time.  When you have identified a behavior you want to change, break it down into small, manageable steps that you can handle.
    3. Write it down and monitor yourself.  Science has shown that writing something down that we want to change is more effective than just saying it.  Instead of saying I have to get my homework done, make a schedule and write it down.
    4. Stand Firm, No Wavering. Try to create rules for yourself and follow through as though you had no other choice. Commit ahead of time, and state your rules clearly. An example might be, I won’t talk on the phone until I am finished with my work.
    5. Don’t overreact when you mess up. We all fail, but don’t make the failure larger than it should be.  Move on and start again.  Author Judith Beck uses a great analogy to describe this: “If you fell down one step, would you fall down the rest?”  Of course not!   Acknowledge the lapse and get back on track.
    6. Anticipate challenges and plan for obstacles. Using the if/then plan we talked about in the first week of class, will help you make the decision in the moment, and not be so easily tempted.
    7. Reward yourself often!!!

    Bonnie Gonzalez has 36 years of experience as a counselor. She has taught high school and college classes and is now offering Intro to Psychology and the Secrets of Success course series through Aim Academy.

  • The Power of Parental Influence in Uncertain Times

    The Power of Parental Influence in Uncertain Times

    The Power of Parental Influence in Uncertain Times

    This is the second in several installments about navigating through the teenage years.  In this post I would like to spend some time describing the culture our teenagers find themselves facing; and discuss how parents can both grieve the loss of our compliant naïve children and begin to rewire the brains of our confused adolescents.

    It’s Really Scary Out There

    In case you haven’t noticed, it’s a pretty scary world out there.  And it’s not just scary for you and me as adults, but it’s especially harrowing for our teenagers.  We have created a world dripping with violence, drugs, and sex, and our children are right in the middle of it.  For a moment, let’s delve into this culture of madness that our teens claim “we just don’t understand.”

    The temptations begin with the culture of drugs and substance abuse.  For teens, drugs provide a short term antidote for the pain of crazy emotions, raging hormones, and a bleak and uncertain future.  Although the effects of this antidote are often short term, the eventual use can kill your child.  Unfortunately the insanity of the teenage years, and a brain looking for short term pleasure without long term reasoning sees this as a pain free alternative.

    Adding to this deadly sin is the potent enticement of adolescent sexuality.  Powerful hormones, combined with a need for peer acceptance, curiosity, intimacy, a female desire to please and a male desire to dominate contribute to a brain filled with desire, with little thought for consequences.   Our society has also become hypersexualized and kids (even younger than teens) have no way to process this information in a healthy way.  These are only a few of the many evil temptations in the world.  I could go on to mention violence, negative peer influences, and internet insanity,  but I think you get the picture—the world is a scary place, especially to a naïve kid who has just left the comfort of playing with Legos and dolls.

     What’s the Protection or the Antidote?

    In the last blog post I mentioned that the adolescent brain is in a state of re-wiring; a pruning occurs which is eventually hardwired into the brain.  Research shows that parental influence of both a good and bad behaviors has an enormous effect on adolescents.  How we interact with our kids gets burned into that adolescent brain telling it how to act as an adult.  Thus, as Michael Bradley states, “through the rewiring process, the sins of the parents becomes the insanity of the adolescent.  Likewise, the wisdom of the parents can become the salvation of the teenager.”

    For the next several paragraphs let’s take a look at this potent influence, and how we can use it to our advantage in training our teens.

    1. First, as a parent we need to begin to grieve and leave behind the image of our sweet compliant child. Few of us are prepared for the emotional hurt which occurs when we lose the close, loving relationship that we had with our young children as they enter adolescence.  Our own need for nurturing is often lost to a teen who is wrapped up in their own emotional struggles.  So what is a parent to do?  GRIEVE, and remember that this teenager in front of you didn’t kill your child, but IS your child, just reborn once again.  Your job is to get to know this new person, and navigate the growing pains together.  Keep your eyes open for the excitement of getting to know your new young adult.  Focus on the good and show your child that you are in control of your own emotions.  Above all exhibit some strength, and demonstrate to your child that you are there for her even when she is distant from you.

     

    1. Next take a look at some of the ways in which you shape your child. Reinforcement is the primary tool of hard-wiring behaviors into your child.  Reinforcement in simple terms is anything that increases behavior.  Punishment, the opposite of reinforcement, is designed to decrease behavior.  Although this is fairly straight forward and simple, it can get a bit confusing when we are talking about the adolescent brain, and that is because we have to add one more component to the mix—the teenage brain’s craving for new sources of stimulation. Adolescents CRAVE excitement, new experiences, and novelty.  Think back to my discussion of scary environments.  The reason that drugs, sex, and other undesirable behaviors are often appealing to adolescents is because of this constant need for brain stimulation.  Now couple this with the fact that the reasoning portion of the brain is not fully developed, and you have a recipe for disaster.  This is why adolescents often push their parent’s “buttons” in order to get a reaction from them.  Your screaming at them can become addictive and act as positive reinforcement to them.  In the world of the developing brain, what we think as negative can often be positive.  So what is a parent to do in the face of this crazy behavior pattern?  Actually the best strategy it is to give no reinforcement to the aggressive outburst and behavior.  Go into shutdown mode and reinforce only the good behavior.  This is where parenting can get really personal.  It requires you to control your own needs and emotions and actually “walk the walk” of an adult role model.

     

    Future Discussion

    I would like to save the final few suggestions for the next installment.  As a final discussion I would like to present some research on how important modeling or copying behavior is in training the adolescent brain and finally present ways to improve your teen’s respect towards you.

    Bonnie Gonzalez has 36 years of experience as a counselor. She has taught high school and college classes and is now offering Intro to Psychology and AP Psychology courses through Aim Academy.

    Reference material from Michael J. Bradley’s, Yes, Your Teen Is Crazy, Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind, Harbor Press:  2003.

     

     

     

     

     

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