Calm Parenting Podcast - 3 Quick Ways to Help Kids at Back-to-School Time

Episode Date: August 6, 2023

As the new school year begins, you’re hoping the new teacher understands your child and can help him succeed, instead of relying on behavior charts that make things worse. So how can you prepare new teachers to help your child? How can you send your child to school feeling confident that this year will be different? Kirk shares a killer idea from the ADHD University program you should use every year. Want personal mentoring with Kirk via Phone? Click here to learn about mentoring packages. Take advantage of our Back-To-School Sale. Set your kids up for success this year: https://celebratecalm.com/products/  Want to book a LIVE EVENT in 2022/2023?! We are now booking IN PERSON and Zoom events for schools, PTAs, churches, synagogues, corporations, and agencies! Simply email Casey@CelebrateCalm with LIVE in the subject line and he'll share a one-page proposal within hours. It's EASY!  Questions? Need help deciding on the best tools for your family? Email [e-mail] and Casey will help you personally!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You know, for some of you, the last year was a mess, especially with COVID. Now we're going back into, for some of your kids, they haven't been in a classroom in a long time. And the last time they were there, it wasn't that awesome. And you're just hoping that the new teacher understands your child and can help him or her succeed instead of just going back to relying on behavior charts that make things worse. And by the way, when we go and we train teachers, we go over that. The first thing I go over is, please let go of the behavior charts. Behavior charts work for compliant kids who don't need behavior charts, but they tend to just cause our kids to shut down, and it just reinforces failure because all that child thinks is this.

Look, school begins at 8 a.m. By 8.05, I'm already on red on the behavior chart. If I'm going to be on red today, I may as well just double down and make it a really bad day, right? They just give up. So what we try to do is teach them how to give our kids tools to succeed. So how can you prepare new teachers to help your child? How can you send your child to school feeling confident that this year will be different? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today on the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at Celebrate Calm. If you need help, reach out to our son, Casey, who always had an upset stomach as school began and often throughout

the school year until we finally figured out how to kind of work with his brain and help teachers understand. And by the way, if you're a homeschooling parent, well, you're the teacher too. So you're going to have to work on your own patient giving your child tools. But if you need help, reach out to Casey, C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com and tell us about your child, your children, your family. What are they struggling with? What are they really good at doing? That helps us to be able to get back to you with some ideas and suggestions, recommendations. We have a huge back to school sale going on. Please take advantage of that. You can get everything that we have for some of the lowest prices we've ever had.

If you need help getting stuff within your budget, reach out to Casey. It's what we do every day. It's not a family business. It's a family mission. It's what we live to do. And so this idea came to us. There's a great mom named Jolie in Wichita, Kansas. Thank you.

And she emailed and said, look, I've got the ADHD university program. And there's an idea on that that I use every school year. And I think you should remind parents who don't have the program of this idea because it has helped me every single year. And so I want to share this idea because it's an awesome idea. And it's just one of 50 or 100 strategies on that program. And that program is great. Your kids don't have to be diagnosed for this to work, right? I'm not really interested in a diagnosis anyway. What I'm interested in is understanding how your child's

brain works, what they struggle with, and also what they're good at, right? And so if your child struggles with focus or organization, executive function, confidence, social skills, all of this will help. So schedule some time apart from back to school night. Back to school night is fine, but there's so much anxiety on that night at every school across America that it's just not the best night. And it's better if you can kind of talk to a teacher outside of this time. Now, some of you schools already begun and you can still use this strategy. And I want us to take a collaborative approach because realize most teachers have not been trained in how to help our kids, right? They just, all they get taught is behavior charts, punishment, take things away, consequences, and it doesn't work. And so it's no different than

us as parents. That's all we were taught. So I have a lot of compassion for teachers. And I like, especially at the beginning, to take a collaborative approach. Do not take in 40 pages of test results and expect the teacher to read it. So here's what I would do. Create a one-page sheet called, and we're just going to say your child's name is Dylan. Dylan's story. Just a one-pager. You want your child's teacher to get a true sense of who your child is and what he's really like. And if you just hand over a report or a diagnosis,

human nature says her first internal response is going to be, well, he's going to be a handful, right? And out of a defensive reaction, you will have inadvertently defined your child by his weaknesses or the diagnosis if there is one. And so I want to take this one pager and divide it into three sections. Section one at the top. What are Dylan's passions and interests in life? What is he curious about? What does he love doing? What excites and motivates him?

By the way, if you do a phone consultation with me, I don't really need to hear a lot about what your child struggles with. I'll ask. But I kind of already know because it's what a million other families have told me. What really helps me in helping your child is knowing what's he curious about? What is he motivated by? And so I'd have that, and I'd put even some pictures there, because pictures, right, are worth a thousand words. A picture there that describes what you see in your child.

Does your child love a certain sports team? Is it dinosaurs? Is it Star Wars? Is it collecting rocks? Right, is he fascinated by history? Is he great at chess? Maybe he's a little inventor and makes things with his hands, right? Show pictures of that cool Lego rocket ship that he built. You're giving the teacher ways to immediately connect with your child on the first day. So when the teacher asks who your child's favorite Star Wars character is, it will immediately relieve your child's anxiety

because now they're forming a connection. And connection breeds compliance. Connection reduces anxiety. And now your teacher can assign your child special projects on dinosaurs. Or maybe it's an older child and he's into a certain period of history or they're really into ancient Rome, but they're also good at building. And so maybe when they're studying that, they can say, oh, you know what I could use some help with? If you could build out of Legos or clay or whatever you want, a replica of a Roman Colosseum, oh man, that would really help me. And now because your child's teacher has some insight into what your child is curious about and good at, now they can create a success early on so your child feels confident and good about himself and so it gives your teacher a chance to compliment your child. Section two, what are your child's strengths and great character attributes?

Describe your child. You know what? Dylan is really funny with a very quick wit. Now you may put an aside like he's going to make inappropriate jokes, but they're really funny. He asks lots of questions. He's really curious. He likes looking at the world in different ways. He's great at adding numbers in his head, right? And you may also mention he doesn't like to show his work, right? He likes to help adults and he does best when he's given very specific directions. If you give him a job, he loves that. You know, my daughter, she's got a great imagination. She loves creating stories. You know, I admire my child because he has a tenacious spirit, right? Maybe it's we adopted him and he had to have heart surgery as an infant, or maybe it's

your child battles eczema, which is really irritating, and allergies every day, but he doesn't complain. Because this makes your child more than a student, more than a number. He's a child who's battled through some things. Maybe my child has dyslexia, but he battles through things. And I want the teacher to know that about my child. I want them to know some personal things, right? And also what they're really good at doing. And then section three at the bottom, not leading with it, are what are your child's struggles and what has helped your child in the past? And this is what we did for Casey every single year so that his teachers knew this is the child who's walking through your door. He's a unique child, and you're going to find certain things very lovable and charming about him, and he's going to ask, you know, when he asks certain questions off topic,

we want you to know it's not because he's rude, it's because he's a really curious kid, and he really loves asking hard questions, right? So you've laid the foundation now. So list three, four, or five very specific struggles your child's going to have in class, right? Because you know that's going to happen. But don't stop there. For each struggle, give us specific concrete strategies you and perhaps past teachers have used with him in the past to create successes. You know what? Dylan struggles with anxiety, but when teachers give him very specific jobs to do right after lunch or recess, it calms him, and he really loves to help. You know, my daughter is a slow processor, but last year,

Mrs. Henderson allowed her to sit on the floor or underneath her desk to complete writing assignments and she was so much more successful when she was allowed to do that. Dylan fidgets with his hands. So last year, we taped this little sensory strip thing underneath his desk. No one can see it. It doesn't really make any noise, but it improves his focus and concentration. So could I bring a few of these in so that other fidgety students can have this tool as well? You know, my child responds much better to positive affirmation than he or she does to consequences. So when Dylan does make a good choice, could you put a little check mark on a sheet of paper

so that he can bring that home? Because that's much more motivating to him than getting red marks or sad faces. And I really look forward to working with you this year. See, you're not just dumping problems on the teacher. Look, here's my child's diagnosis and here's his testing. Good luck. No, you're equipping the teacher with practical ways to help, right? And you may also let the teacher know all the ways you're helping your child with tutoring, with occupational therapy,

stuff that you're doing at home, right? So the teacher knows you're engaged, you're invested, and you're not just expecting the teacher to work miracles. And throughout the school year, you can refer to your cheat sheet when asking, hey, listen, I know you've mentioned that he's struggling in this area. Have you tried the sensory strip? Have you given him a very specific job? And you can update this sheet with new strategies that you keep learning. And that way you're staying engaged with the teacher and you're collaborating and you're problem solving. You're not letting the conversation and the narrative go to your child is very disruptive and a bad child, and we just need to have a conference to talk about what's the consequence, what are you going to do at home? By

the way, this just triggered a thought to me about something that I recommend. I think it's important at times to separate school and home life. So when your child comes home and they got a note from school of like the child, your child is struggling in school. I don't think that you should directly address that with a consequence at home. Right. Let the school let school stay at school and let there be a consequence if there needs to be. You know that I favor giving putting 85 percent of our energy into giving kids tools instead of just consequences. But now it's like, okay, so all day at school I struggled, and now I don't get to go to recess or on the class field trip, and now at home I'm also in trouble, and I lost my privileges there, right? It's like your spouse coming home from work, and she's got a sad face at work.

And you're like, seriously, honey? Another sad face from your boss? Guess what? No screens for you tonight. Like don't make your child's life a never-ending succession of negatives and failures and consequences, or they will just shut down, right? So when you create this cheat sheet, right, it's a very practical, constructive way to create success for your kids. And what I want you to know is it is nearly impossible to rebuild a child's confidence. It's not impossible,

but it's hard. Once it's been destroyed or once that child has internalized failure, because they start to say, I'm stupid, I'm dumb, I'm slow, I'm bad. And you have an opportunity now at the beginning of this school year to prevent a lot of the battles, the tears, and those wounded, crushed spirits. So before school begins, let's set our kids up for success, right? And so we're going to create lots of tools. And I encourage you, look, you're not going to send your kids to school without a backpack and pencils and lunch. So let's not begin the school year just hoping it will be better, hoping you get the right teacher. I want you to go into the school year with at least 50 very practical, concrete strategies

so you can help your child improve focus and attention, improve organization, help with social skills so he's not sitting alone all the time in the cafeteria. I want to help with blurting out, right, with your kids who are very fidgety in class to learn how to control their impulses, their emotions, the anxiety, the sensory issues, all of those things. So I encourage you, if you do not have it yet, listen to the ADHD University program. Your kids don't have to have a diagnosis.

It's just if I'm describing your child, we go through practical ways to help them. It's part of the Calm Parenting Package. It is on sale this month. We also have the Get Everything Package. If you need help, reach out to Casey because he's been through all of this. He has that kind of brain, and he knows what it's like.

So reach out to him. We will help you out. But let's do this cheat sheet idea. And I'm going to send a newsletter. So if you don't have our newsletter, sign up at the website or email Casey about it. We'll put you on newsletter and I'll put this in written form in the newsletter this week so that you can read this and you can actually possibly even share it with other parents, share this podcast with other parents if you like this idea, and even share it with your child's teacher. So love you all. Let's make this school year a really good school year, okay? Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.