Seven Teachable Traits Essential To Help Children Thrive

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
Hi everyone, welcome to the show, I am Dr. Nicole, and on today’s episode, we’re talking about what really allows kids to thrive as they go through their growing up years and become adults. There is such a big focus on things like what school you attend and your grades and standardized test scores, and all of those kinds of things, but do they really prepare our kids to be healthy, happy, productive and thriving people? And if you have a child with developmental disabilities, learning challenges, mental health issues or behavioral needs — are they automatically excluded from thriving in life because they might now excel in those traditional or academically-focused ways?

Well, my guest today says no, and she’s going to provide us with some key insights into why so many kids today are struggling to thrive more than ever before and what we can do about it. Dr. Michele Borba is the author of UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World, and is an internationally renowned educational psychologist and an expert in parenting, bullying, and character development. She is an NBC contributor who appears regularly on The Today Show and has been featured as an expert on Dateline, The View, Dr. Phil, and so many others. She lives in Palm Springs, California with her husband and is the mother of three grown sons. I have so been looking forward to this interview, welcome to the show, Michele!

Dr. Michele Borba
Thank you, I’m so glad to be here! Same thing, I can’t wait to finally meet you!

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
So I want to dive in because there are so many things that we could cover, and you and I could talk for so long about this. I want to start with: You have worked with kids for a long time, both in your work in schools and outside of schools, and I’ve heard you say, in a previous interview that you have never been more worried than you are worried about this current generation of kids. Let’s start with why you’re worried. Why is that?

Dr. Michele Borba:
Well, and I’m worried prior to the pandemic. What I did was I started to do interviews of teens, which I absolutely adore, but I wanted to get their perspective on how they’re feeling about life. I did 1 on 1 about 100 kids from diversity across the country. And the top term that every kid told me was “empty”, “I feel empty.” Now, these are well-loved children. Extraordinary. Many of them have extreme, wonderful opportunities. But I said “What’s causing your emptiness?” One kid just — I thought a knife went through me. “We feel like we’re being raised as products or test scores and we don’t have the skills to be human beings.” And then, at the same time, I started listening to the top of the top of Ivy League counselors, I did a presentation to 2000 of the top counselors and asked them: “How are you seeing today’s kids coming in to you?” They said, “They’re the best and the brightest, their GPAs are over the top, they’re 4.0’s or 7.3’s, but they’re empty.” The number one trend that we’re also seeing is their mental health. We can’t give them enough counselors. And the other thing they were very worried about, many of them were requesting no roommates because they don’t know how to get along with each other.

Now it was: Alright, here are these wonderful children, we love them all no matter where they are, regardless. And they’re not going to be able to thrive.
So the book I began to write was called Thrivers. I looked at all the research out there, and the one thing I realized is that thrivers are made, not born. It’s not a GPA, it’s not an SAT score. It is nothing to do with where you live, and I knew that, because I started to look at some amazing research from Emmy Werner, who was my Godsend, University of California Davis, for 40 years — 40 years! Has been looking at the same children, born on the island of Kauai, who were dealt with extraordinary adversity, amazing, horrific things in their lives. And one-third of those kids grew up to be caring, competent and confident! So it was the why. What did they have going for them? It wasn’t IQ or DNA. It was how they were raised.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
And I think that’s so important to think about, especially that many of the parents who are a part of my community and who listen to this show have children with some type of special needs, some type of medical need, mental health need, learning disability, developmental disability, and there’s this sort of inherent idea, even if it’s not explicitly spoken by people at school or by the doctors or whoever, that “Well, your kid’s not doing so well at school, you maybe shouldn’t expect much, their grades are poor, they don’t test well on IQ tests”, which is — don’t even get the two of us started on that whole thing with IQ tests.

Dr. Michele Borba
My blood pressure just went up!

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
But parents are left feeling like, “Wow! It’s probably not really possible for my kid to do really well or to thrive in life.” And what I love about what you’re saying is no, the research shows that what we had emphasized as being important really is not the most important thing.

Dr. Michele Borba
I’m with you on that one. And I think the most important thing that I learned from all of the research when I was writing Thrivers is the parents who really are helpful getting their kids over the hump are ones who follow the child’s path. They raise their kids based on who the child is, not what they want them to become. A phenomenal study by [ph “Goerdel and Grazel”, they looked at 700 of the most highly-gifted and talented individuals we have, and they discovered that 1/4th of them had learning disabilities. That alone is like, okay, so what helped them? Each one of their parents, if not a parent, it was a teacher or some other caring champion in their life said “Hey, here’s the grain you need to go, here’s the path you need to follow.” And the other thing — They didn’t follow the “fix-it” mentality, instead, they figured out the child’s strengths and went from there. I think that was the, I’m applauding, moment going, there is the first thing we need to do is reset our parenting based on who, not what.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
Beautiful, that quote that I’m going to pull out of there to highlight for this episode about following the child. Every child has strengths, putting them on the path, supporting them on the path they’re meant to take and not this box that we’ve established that says “You need to get these grades, you need to take every AP class that’s offered, you need to go to these kinds of schools, you better have these types of standardized test scores. We need to not be looking at that box and we need to say “What is meaningful and appropriate and going to help this particular child thrive?

Dr. Michele Borba
My head is hurting from going up and down. Yes, here is the other thing: The fascinating thing is once I saw the research, I said okay, let’s look at some stories. And what I did in Thrivers is each chapter of what the characteristics of kids who thrive are, which are things that we can teach, I’d find a story about a real kid we could emulate with. One of them was Michael Phelps. I love the story of Michael Phelps because he was diagnosed with ADHD. Ritalin and everything else, but he had a mom who realized this kid had this, but he needed to find the avenue that helped him thrive. Michael said “It was the swimming pool. It was where I could take all my excess energy and finally thrive.” But he also said his mom was so helpful. They’d come up with a signal when he couldn’t calm down, that was C, which meant “Calm”.

She’d be in the stands and went like this, and then they had this wonderful little way he could greet the calm down as a child, he had the perfect coach that helped him learn to set little teeny achievable goals and he said “That’s what helped me thrive. I just kept finding my strength area and finally a place that I could shine, regardless of people who said I’d never make it. That’s what helped me.” So I think your first question as the parent is: Who is your child? Where do you see him finding those areas that sustain his interest, that he looks joyous, that he has that “Wow mom, this is really something, I love to do”, follow that path instead of the fix-it mentality. Because when you keep focusing on the weakness, that’s what the child sees. If we focus on their strengths, then you boost up their confidence, and confidence is the first characteristic of the thriver.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
Love it. And we’re going to get into those characteristics. I want to, before we do that, let’s really define this term ‘Thrivers’. I love it. When I saw the title of the book, I was like “This is just an exceptional term.” This term, ‘Thrivers’, you use that term to describe kids who have skills, abilities, the inner resources to really thrive and do well in the real world. How do you define a thriver? What makes a child a thriver?

Dr. Michele Borba
To me, it’s a rebounder kind of a kid. It’s the kid who has a sense of personal agency, who doesn’t use us. Obviously at age 2, 3 and 4, you’re going to need mommy and daddy to just say “Good job” and “Keep going”, but along the way, we can step back and this kid is self-driven. Now, where does he get that? Not from DNA. Every piece of research I learned says those are teachable kinds of skills that we need to just keep empowering our child, and as a result, he doesn’t struggle as much, he shines more.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
I love that, and I think we are seeing that play out in this last 10 months more than ever, right? Kids who are taking this really abnormal, challenging situation of the pandemic and are continuing to move forward, continuing to manage, able to quickly rebound and be flexible and make it work, and then we’re seeing a lot of kids, and adults, for that matter who are not. It’s sort of this perfect situation for seeing the contrast of this, of kids who really are able to thrive, who have these characteristics and kids who don’t.

Dr. Michele Borba
Well, I think there is a lesson from the pandemic, and that is the first thing is we need to reset the parenting, because now, look: If not a pandemic, it’s going to be something more. Our children are being raised in a very, very volatile, uncertain world. Just prior to the pandemic, it was fires, it was evacuations, it was school shootings, and their anxiety levels were going up, and now we have this. But despite that, many of the kids I’m interviewing are able to still rebound. And when I asked them why, it’s every case, two things: They have somebody in their life who’s there that says “We’re going to get through this.” And maybe the first thing we can do is that sense of optimism, which is actually the seventh trait of the thriver: Keep being your voice to the child. For instance, maybe it’s coming up with a mantra in your family, “We got this, we’ll get it through.”

Your child may not be saying this now, but if you keep repeating one little message till it becomes your mantra, your voice becomes your child’s inner voice, and the first thing about Thrivers is they start self-talking to refute the negativity, refute the anxiety. So find that simple little place. What is the phrase that you want to keep using? That’s the first piece.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
I love it. So let’s talk about these seven characteristics that you have identified. You lay them out in the book, these seven — I think it’s important to note, teachable skills. I like that you’re spotlighting that these are not just things that some kids are born with and some aren’t. These are things that we learn or don’t learn, which the great thing about that is we have the opportunity then as adults in kids’ lives to help them learn these things. These teachable skills that help them. So let’s just go through what the seven are, and then let’s delve into them.

Dr. Michele Borba
I chose seven. Now I’ve got to tell you why I chose them, and then we’re going to do — number one is I wanted them proven by science, so they are resilient-based. Number two, I want them to be also identified as a 21st-century skill, so I looked at the economic focus groups, I looked at what they say are the skills that are needed. Three is they had to be teachable. Four, they had to be proven to also reduce mental health problems because that was the other reason I got into this, we’ve never seen higher rates of stress in our kids, and I wanted to also choose ones that build character. So they’re identified as character strengths. Now, you don’t have to have all seven, so don’t worry mom and dad. Breathe a little bit. But figure out which ones your child always has.

The first one is self-confidence. We can start that at a very young age, that’s a child who has a strong sense of “Who I am” not “What I am”. The second one is empathy. Why empathy is so critical is that the research from Emmy Werner and all resilience theory says kids have social confidence, that’s going to be critical, particularly now because they’ve been socially distancing for quite a while. Third, self-control, that ability to regulate. Some kids, it’s harder than others, but they have some kind of a coping strategy that’s learned so they can identify their stress and tune it down. Fourth, fascinatingly, is integrity. That is, they have a solid moral compass, which helps them when stress builds knowing: This is what I stand for, this is what I don’t stand for. They’re less risk-aversive, they’re able to stand up for their own beliefs. Then come a few other ones along the way. I did choose curiosity because it keeps them open to life and it keeps them open to newness, as a result, they thrive a little more. Perseverance, so they have that grit. That’s teachable. They keep on going. Optimism so they have that sense of hope along the way.

Now the other thing that’s fascinating is that too often what we’ve been doing is teaching just one skill. Many programs do, we’ve got this one program, we’re all going to teach grit. But what I discovered is that if you put any two of those strengths together, it creates a multiplier effect. You can go with the confidence and then you can teach perseverance, oh my gosh! You’ve got a kid who is even more likely to keep going! Any two or three together multiply the effect of one. So that means you’ve got a parenting framework that’s going to last you from birth to whenever the child leaves you and keep on going. It’s going to help your child thrive, not just now, but later.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
You know, it’s striking me as your talking, I’m thinking just about kids that I work with, my own kids at home, and I’m thinking of these seven — you can really look at any child and identify, every kid’s going to have at least one of these that sort of is a strength for them already. It gives us something to build from, right? So a child — if you’re a parent listening, you may be thinking oh my gosh, self-control, that is not — perseverance, that is not a strength for my child, but your child might really have a bend towards optimism or a really good sense of empathy. So I think looking at — is that maybe one of the first steps? Taking an analysis and saying “Where is my child within these? What are they already doing really well with, where are they weak?” Would that be a first step?

Dr. Michele Borba
Oh, we are so on the same page together. Yes! And so actually, in the introduction, there is a 30-item checklist of helping you identify where your child’s strengths are. Don’t overlook which ones you see better. For instance, Michael Phelps, it wasn’t self-control, but he had that sense of perseverance, and his mom giving him that sense of optimism, finding the coach and going down that path. That’s exactly where you go. It’s taking a moment to not dive in too quickly but just recognizing who your kid is. And once you figure that out, find one other person who supports you and pass that information on. Maybe it’s your grandma, maybe it’s your parenting partner, maybe it’s the teacher. But if you can get on board with one other person, you’re not going to be so lonely doing this yourself. Even if that person reinforces that strength once a week for 30 seconds, it’s better.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
Absolutely. I think that’s the piece — and you know we talked about this so much on the show, the importance of parents being at the helm but soliciting the support and advocating for these things to be addressed and to be partners with the people in schools, in therapy, in wherever your child is, this sort of village effect of saying, “Hey, this is something I really want to be focusing on, here is how we are doing it at home. How can we embed that in what’s happening at school?” Is there a key person at school who can be supportive of looking beyond just how many math problems they’re getting done or whether they’re doing this, but to work on fostering some of these pieces?

Dr. Michele Borba
Yes, because we are burning ourselves out trying to do it all. In fact, what I’m doing right this minute, before I got on with you, was putting together a 30-page educator discussion guide so they could do it at the school and figure out how to network and work with parents together. We have got to be allies together on all of this.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
Absolutely. I want to get into some of the specifics and I want to make sure that we have time to really give parents some tips on working on some of these, but before that, I want to really underscore this idea that these things that you’re talking about: Confidence, empathy, self-control, perseverance, all of these things, the research really does show that these are the things that make a difference for our kids successfully moving on to adulthood. That we need to, as educators, as parents, as whoever, move away from this idea that your GPA or the number of honors classes or your SAT scores or whether you went to post-secondary education or not, that those are the defining things that make somebody successful later on. I really want to make sure we’re spotlighting that.

Dr. Michele Borba
Yes. What I did to make that, I came up with 450 footnotes based on the science that proved it. The second thing is you want a child who lives longer. The highest correlation to a healthy, happy kid who lives longer is kids who actually have some of those traits. So I think what we’ve done is we’ve been fed the wrong parenting framework. We got ourselves so overwhelmed in the GPA rank and score that as a result, our kids aren’t thriving as well as they could because they’re not following the path they need to follow.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
The beautiful part about that for those of you listening who are parenting a kid who maybe has not easily fit in one of these boxes of school or life paths is, I want you to feel this tremendous sense of relief right now: You don’t have to spend your entire time raising this kid, trying to make them somehow fit in this box. It’s the wrong box. And the goal is to create a box that works for them and moves them forward, and I think there’s a tremendous amount of relief in that for parents who are incredibly stressed trying to help their child with dyslexia or severe ADHD or autism spectrum disorder or epilepsy or whatever it might be, be on this hamster wheel of “success” and we’re pushing and burning ourselves out and burning our kids out. We’ve got them on the wrong path!

Dr. Michele Borba
Yes, exactly. That’s what it is. So the first thing is: Everybody, breathe. Then the second thing you do is once you figure out, of those seven, what your child already has as a strength. And the third thing is you just check through and you go through the chapters and you go “What’s the one, one little skill”, because each one of these strengths, what I’ve also done is identified three main abilities that research says will boost them. So don’t go trying to do it all. You’re better off if you find one little skill in each one. For instance, in optimism, yeah, there’s a whole lot of things you can do, but right now it would be what we just said: Let’s go through and let’s come up with one mantra. Let’s keep doing it a minimum of 21 days. Another thing is, let’s look at our kids. Are they a worry-wart? Then let’s help them check their worries so they don’t catastrophize every little thing.

Navy SEALs, they’re some of the best ones that taught me some of the best things. I said, “Well give me some strategies that you’re doing.” They said the best thing that you could teach a kid who is really anxious is tell them to chunk their worries. So what does that mean? They said, “When we go into battle, our goal isn’t to try to get through, yes, the whole battle. It’s too overwhelming. What we try to do instead is get through the first minute, then the next minute. Then the second, the third minute.” Chunk the worry into little manageable parts. That’s a phenomenal simple little strategy to do.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
That’s great, and I think your emphasis — especially for our overachieving parents out there, just pick one! Sometimes we get excited as parents, right? Like “Oh! I read this book, I heard this interview, there are all of these —”, we completely overwhelm our kids with all these things. I would think about it as, you know as a parent or if you’re a professional listening, a child you’re working with in therapy or a child you’re teaching in the classroom, you know what the hick-ups are that come up regularly in that child’s life, whether it’s the worries or the lack of self-control or the difficulties with having confidence. I would say make it practical and pick a tool that’s really going to apply to something that you’re dealing with on a pretty regular basis.

Dr. Michele Borba
Yes. What the main thing. Let’s go to self-control for just a minute because I think that’s the top question I’m getting asked from parents, and I think the most important thing we need to realize is that when we look at the stress level of kids, our stress level, according to the CDC, is far outflanking our kids. What happens? Our stress mirrors down to our children. Here is the next takeaway that’s wonderful. If you learn any of these abilities to teach your kids, teach yourself first, because what happens is once you keep practicing and practicing and practicing — or you can ask your child: “Can you help me learn this stress management tool?” And the kids go, “Well, thank God, mom. Yeah, I’m right there with you!” Examples number one is: You can’t learn self-control unless you learn your stress signs.

What’s the repeated thing that you always do or your child always does or your husband always does right before they blow up or right before they get irritated? So how about for the next couple of weeks, just keep quietly pointing out each child’s stress sign and your own. You know, “Right before I get stressed, I get really flushed, or I can feel my heart rate go up,” or “Oh, I see that you always do this right before you go to take that timed test, or your feet start to go…” that’s giving your child agency, because now they know, “Wow, everybody has stress signs”. Right before you get angry. In fact, you could write the word ‘Anger’ on a card and go, “Everybody gets angry. But it’s how you choose to show your anger that’s going to get you in trouble or not.” Put a big ‘D’ in front of the word anger, now it spells ‘Danger’. Let’s figure out how to control it.
Navy SEALs, once again told me their best strategy is a slow, deep breath. They said “It took us hours and hours of practice to get it right. And the best way is a slow, deep breath the moment you feel the stress. That’s deep down here.” So it’s a slow inhale, ride it like you’re riding up an escalator, hold it and let it slowly out. Is that easy for an ADHD kid? Absolutely not. I taught special ed for years. You’ve got to do it over and over and do it with your child. You could also do belly breathing where he feels it by having your back line up together with your arms locked up at the elbows. So “Listen to mommy, watch mommy, feel mommy. Now you try it.” Your exhale, say Navy SEALS, is always twice as long as your inhale. I saw a mom do that with her 3 year old. 3 years old. But it was over and over. “Grey, you’re getting upset. Take a slow, deep breath.” She did it for weeks until finally, that little 3 year old came and went “I’m really get irritated! I get irritated!”, said the 3 year old, “I got to do that slow breath.” And he did it.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
And I think those things work with even kids and young adults who have more severe and profound developmental disabilities and issues that we clinically work on, even with kids who developmentally are at those very young ages, they can with consistence, learn to feel those things and be aware of those things in their body and use those strategies, but I think you’re exactly right, it’s the modeling and the doing together with them and the repeated over and over, the consistency so they really can make those connections. I say that because too often, I think that parents and professionals dismiss some of these kinds of things for certain populations. “Oh, he won’t get that/Oh, he can’t do that.” We’re here to tell you that even really developmentally young kids can learn to be aware of and do these things.

Dr. Michele Borba
Oh yes, and you and I have been teachers. So what are the things that we learned way back then? You take whatever strategy that’s scientifically based, and then you bring it down to wherever is the child’s level. You don’t start here, you start at the child’s level. After you can do that, a couple of things I see for a lot of children who have impulsivity is they breathe too quickly. It doesn’t get the relaxation process. So what I did in Thrivers is put at least 10 variations to each idea. Teens said what really helped them is to put a feather on the top of the table, because they breathe so fast. Slowly breathe the feather, but it can’t jump. It’s got to slide across the table. Little kids’ bubble blowers. “Slowly, no, no, no! Don’t breathe the meany away too quickly! We will slowly see, how slowly the bubble can go!” I did that with my 2 year old grandson. It took him a long time without swallowing the bubbles, but pretty soon, “Look Nanny! I got the bubble going real slow!” That’s what we need to do. Take it down and adapt it to what helps your child and there is where you go.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
And that piece about us embracing and working on these things for ourselves first. I talk about that, as parents, as adults, we need to go first. Not fair saying to a kid, “You need to work on this, you need to learn how to calm down, you need to learn how to persevere, you need to have more confidence”, when we aren’t doing it. And that’s one of the beautiful things: We can’t control what our kids do. We can control what we do, right? And that has power in it when we are managing these things ourselves and modeling. That has a profound impact on our kids. So even if you have a super-resistive kid, start with yourself.

Dr. Michele Borba
Actually, the other thing it does is it restores relationships in your own home, because one of the things we know we’re all at, everybody’s on edge. Our stress levels are at this level, and everybody is saying we’re overwhelmed. So maybe the next thing you can do is create a calm-down corner in your home so kids have time-ins, not time-outs. As soon as you start to feel yourself get irritated, you can have your child, when they’re calm, help you create — let’s make a place in our house, maybe it’s bean bag chairs, maybe it’s “Hey mom, bubbles work for me.” But your other son says, “No, books work for me/mom, music works for me.” Stock it with things that work for everybody. And then the moment you start to feel yourself getting out of control, don’t wait until the meltdown. You’ve got seconds, but it could be nothing more than a calm down signal. Don’t talk, just go like this and that means “I need space.” You be the one, mom, to go and use it first. You show how you’re going to sit quietly by yourself. And pretty soon, your kids will model it and go there. After a while, you can put that calm down in their own bedroom and they’ll be able to use that the rest of their life because now they know what helps them relax.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about perseverance because as I’m thinking about questions that often come up and things that parents are challenged around. One of the things that I’m seeing across the board is we’ve got a lot of kids who give up really quickly. They get that initial uncomfortable feeling of “I might screw something up/I don’t know exactly how to do this/this is hard” and then they just go “Nope, I’m not doing it whether anymore”, whether it’s persevering on a school assignment or persevering on a project they’re working on, or persevering with an activity they started to start like extracurricular activities, then they want to drop — So I think parents ask a lot: How do we work with our kids to teach them to persevere when something is tricky?

Dr. Michele Borba
Carol Dweck’s got the best research in the world on that one, and here is what we know: First, stress reduces our perseverance, so let’s just all acknowledge that we need to lower our expectations a little bit instead of keep raising them. Figure out what your child’s current ability to stick to a task is and think of it like a rubber band. Your goal is to stretch them slowly without snapping. So first, identify their ability, how long can they sit? Second, start acknowledging in your house that mistakes are okay. For children, it becomes so risk-averse that the teens are telling us they’re scared to death to make a mistake because “That’s going to drop my GPA.” No, that’s tragic, because it’s learning from that mistake that’s going to help you. Start acknowledging your own. That’s going to be fun because your kid already knows it, but go “I really blew this”, but the key is admit what you blew, whatever, but “Next time I’ll —” If you start verbalizing that, “Here’s what I blew, but here’s what I am going to do differently next time”.

Third is what Carol Dweck’s research would say: Stop acknowledging the end product. “Oh my gosh, you got 100%. Oh my gosh, you only missed 3 this time.” Instead, she says the key is to acknowledge “You’re hanging in there/Oh I love how you didn’t quit. Oh my gosh, you’re still going! You’re getting better!” And when your child says, “I can’t do it!” You just say “Can’t do it yet.” We’re going to keep stretching, stretching, stretching. If you use just those four pieces, what we now know, those are the best ways to slowly stretch your child’s ability to hang in there.”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
That’s a great visual, that idea of stretching, pulling that rubber band so there is tension, but not so much that it snaps. And I think so often, especially around school-based stuff, we vacillate between the rubber band just sitting there, and then snapping it, right? We do a very poor job of finding that middle ground where we are pushing, we’re stretching them, but at a level they can manage. That just-manageable challenge, that middle ground is tricky, but it’s so important to find that.

Dr. Michele Borba
It is, and you know. You’ve got 4 kids, I have 3. Each one of them is different as night and day. So don’t confuse your older kid or that kid based on — it’s this kid. What is this kid capable of doing? How am I going to stretch this child to be the best he can be? And that rubber band is just slowly — the key is don’t snap them, because once you snap it, it means it’s too high. Think about going up the ladders of success, but keep it at the rung here, and what’s the next step here, and the next step.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
And for those of you who aren’t familiar with Dr. Carol Dweck, who Michele just mentioned can look her up: Growth mindset is what she talks about and it’s really a wonderful way of thinking about exactly these things. So it’s so exciting to me, Michele that you’ve pooled all these amazing people and their research and put it in one really accessible, practical place for parents to be able to access.

Dr. Michele Borba
Thank you, that was the key. And I think that was the thing, Carol started all of this research in classrooms, where the fascinating thing is, think about this, parents because this is your take-away too. She was talking to two classrooms. Exactly the same kind of IQs and GPAs, two math groups. But for some reason, even though these two rooms started exactly at the same level, this group of kids was overachieving, this group of kids was tanking or not doing as well. What was the difference? It had nothing to do with DNA, it had to do with what the teachers were praising. This teacher here kept praising the end product. “You got 100%”. This teacher was praising “You’re hanging in there, you’re not giving up.” And as a result, these kids kept stretching and stretching their potential. That’s a great take-away.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
It’s a beautiful take-away that applies not just to school settings or academics, but it applies to life with our kids, right? Whether seeing our kids hanging in there with things and really focusing on our own awareness of that in them, and then spotlighting that for them during the day, no matter how challenges they may be, spotlighting all the ways we see them doing it, staying in it, hanging in there even when it’s tough. What a great reframing, because we’re so often focused on what you didn’t do, what you didn’t get right, what you didn’t accomplish and this real shift to really being intentional about focusing on what they’re sticking with and the process of it.

Dr. Michele Borba
I love the word “Intentional”, because I think that’s the whole thing. We get so zeroed on everything else, be intentional and finding the one little thing and don’t give up on this. I loved Lewis Terman’s work too because he just threw out this whole thing on IQ. He swore way back, way back then, that the single greatest correlation to success was IQ. And he said “I’m going to prove it. We should be putting our time and energy into kids who are smart here.” Halfway through the study, he realized, “Oh my gosh, it’s absolutely wrong. They’re not doing any better than the rest of the kids?” What was the difference of any kid who succeeded? Three things, and they were the three things here in the book: Number one was self-confidence, number two was perseverance, number three was goal setting. He said parents taught them those skills way before. And the kids who learned goal-setting, which you can do with your own child: “I know you’re struggling, so what’s one little thing we’re going to do differently next time?”
If you can sit down and help your child learn that one little thing, they’ll get unstuck. And now, instead of focusing on the error, they’re focusing on “Okay, I’m going to focus on this instead.”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
So good. So good! I know that we need to be wrapping up here. You and I could talk for so long about this! I want to leave people — we’ve talked about a lot of different areas, so many great takeaways here. If there’s one thing that you would want our listeners or our parents or professionals to take away from this, something they could start doing right now based on this information to help develop these traits of a thriver in kids, what would be one take-away?

Dr. Michele Borba
Well, the first thing is, in terms of the parents piece is maybe get yourself an index card. Don’t let your child see you doing it, but over the next few days or weeks, how long it takes per child, start writing down what you see they love, what drives their passion, where is their joy? Where are they sustaining far more attention to? You’ll find that it’s fascinating. Some things they can focus on longer, what you’ll discover is who your child is, what their learning strengths are and what their joy is. And research says that’s what’s going to give your child a sense of flow. They’re going to be far more likely to succeed because you’re now going to tap them into their strength areas. The second thing is what’s the little thing that’s their hick-up? The one little thing that they’re struggling with: Is it self-control? Then let’s focus on “Everybody stop, we need to take a slow, deep breath.” Please, mom and dad, don’t give up on the first time. It takes you at least 21 days, it’s going to take your kid as long as needed, but keep on working and modeling the same thing, and I’m just going to say the final thing is just keep telling your child “We’re going to get through this. We’re going to make it, we’re going to be strong together because that’s who we are as a family.” 40 years from now, at a family reunion, your child is not going to be telling you how great you carpool, but they will be saying “She kept telling us we were going to get through it, and guess what? We did!” That’s who we need. Oh, you’re going to make me cry.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
Absolutely. So, so good. Let’s make sure that people know where they can get to book, because the book is out right now, it has just been released. That’s right, you can see the photo if you’re watching the video, it is called Thrivers: The Surprising Reasons Why Some Kids Struggle and Others Shine. Tell us about — go to your website, go to Amazon, give us the details.

Dr. Michele Borba
My website is micheleborba.com, I’m a one L Michele. Anybody else, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, any bookstore that you like, it’s in hardback. I just spent four days recording it, so it’s in audio and it also will be in digital form, I would say the audio or the hardback, only because I have some parents say “I bought it on audio to put it into my car set,” and the kids are going “You’re not doing that one right, mom, you’re not doing that right.” If you need to protect yourself, get the hardback version and then go for it! That’s how we’re going to raise a strong, healthier group of kids.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
Absolutely. Everybody, get the book. It is amazing, you can tell from listening to this interview, the passion, the great information, the practicality that Michele brings to this, so get the book, you’re going to love it, you’re going to use it. Michele, thank you so much for taking time out of your really busy schedule to talk with us today, to do this really, really phenomenal information. Thank you for writing the book and for being here with us.

Dr. Michele Borba
Thank you.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:
And thanks to all of you for listening, we will catch you back here next week for our next episode of The Better Behavior Show.