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visualize himself accomplishing a goal he has chosen for himself, it tricks the brain into thinking he’s done it. The same is true of writing goals down—it’s powerful reinforcement, and if that goal is there in your child’s handwriting it’s a great reminder that it’s his goal, not yours.
We encourage kids to put their written goals on a piece of paper in their backpack where they’ll often come across it, or to stick them on their bedroom wall.
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Frequent exercise. Even short bursts of exercise can activate the brain enough to get started on something, in part by increasing dopamine in the prefrontal cortex.
Social support. Finding an older kid to serve as a homework coach, or helping your child join a study group of mildly more academic peers, can help his focus.
when a homework coach is an older kid, the one being tutored has a dopamine spike.
Some saboteurs need music in the background to help them accomplish tasks that they’d otherwise avoid.
chewing gum can improve activation, processing speed, and work production.
Saboteurs often do well when they work intensely for short periods marked by a timer and then take a prescribed break.
Ken Robinson is one of the leading thinkers in the area of finding your passion, and his book The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything emphasizes the importance of looking for that intersection of passion and skill.
if your son says he wants to get an athletic scholarship and play baseball for Duke, ask him how he wants to get there.
supporting kids in the pursuit of their nonacademic interests is a good move,
It’s astonishing to us how many kids have never asked themselves what it is they want, or have never had someone ask it of them.
They should ask, “What do I want? What do I love to do?”
Help your kids pay attention to what they’re good at.
They often overlook their talents and focus instead on other areas that are someone else’s greatest strength.
love of animals.
Many Eeyores are homebodies who resist doing anything new or different and have a narrowly defined comfort zone.
Ask your child if she would like to feel more comfortable in new situations—to feel less nervous about them. If she says yes, you could suggest that she work with an expert who knows how to help kids feel more confident about taking on new challenges.
Physical activity can be motivating to all kinds of kids. See if you can interest your Eeyore (with a short-term reward if necessary) in engaging in an individual sport that most kids don’t do, like fencing, rock climbing, or judo.
Explore where your child’s true inner motivation lies. You can do this by asking when in life he or she feels “really happy.”
kids who are obsessively motivated or have difficulty sustaining motivation and effort will often say that they feel happiest when they have no responsibilities, when nothing is expected of them, and when they feel no pressure.
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Encourage flow in any activity by giving your kids the space and time they need to do what they love.
“Everybody feels good when they’re successful at things and get positive feedback from other people. It’s completely normal. My experience, though, is that the wisest thing is to evaluate your own performance and to focus on getting better at doing the right thing.” If
down with their kids at the outset of a summer break and have them make a list of all the things they’d like to do on their own during their free time.
The basic mindfulness meditation practice involves focusing awareness on the breath and noticing thoughts as they arise.
mindfulness app Headspace
meditate for as little as ten or fifteen minutes twice a day
Transcendental Meditation is a standardized technique taught by highly trained teachers,
Look for opportunities during the day to let your mind wander.
(tm.org).
when you are sleep deprived, you effectively form twice as many memories of negative events in your life as of positive events,”
An incentive is okay in this case because you’re not offering it as a means to get her to do what you want her to do, but to help her do what she wants to do on her own but finds challenging. It’s a subtle but important distinction.
The biological clock of night owls is often delayed by exposure to electronic media and electric light.
For middle school and high school kids, you could encourage them to check out the Khan Academy or other online tutoring sites to help them master material they’re being taught in class.
optimal levels of stress for girls often isn’t enough to motivate boys, and optimal stress for boys can be overwhelming for many girls.
Finnish students—who have among the highest educational outcomes in the world—have the lightest homework requirement, rarely receiving more than a half hour per day.
Many kids shine most brightly in classes that aren’t core academic subjects (or in activities that aren’t classes at all)—like art, music, shop, and drama. These are never “station to station” and always about trying to make a product or performance better, bit by bit.
Zones of Regulation. In this program, children are taught to ask themselves how they’re feeling in their body and to recognize certain signals. When children are in the “red zone,” they are feeling intense and emotional. The “yellow zone” is also a heightened state, but they have more control over their actions. In the “green zone,” they feel calm, alert, and focused.
the “blue zone,” where a child is bored, tired, or sad.
While social media is a greater concern for girls, video games tend to be a bigger problem for boys.
Slut pages are when someone, typically a boy, collects nude photos of girls in his school and posts them online. It’s not a consensual sharing, and sometimes occurs without the girls’ knowledge.
encourage everyone in the family to make a technology-use plan.
plan for the things we know are important and work backward.
the brain can’t really differentiate between an actual experience and an experience that is vividly imagined
mental contrasting is designed to help students set realistic goals.
The first step of mental contrasting is to ask your child to set her own goal.
Step two is to encourage your child to write down several words about the hoped-for outcome.
Step three is to ask your child to consider inner obstacles to that goal.
considering how they will be affected and what they can do when they surface.
When they understand what they can do better than most people and what does not come easily, it increases their sense of confidence that there will be a place for them in the world as adults.
