Time to Cut His Own Meat

                  

                   Inspired by a recent presentation I heard, I have decided to make a major life change. I have decided to let my son cut his own meat for dinner. More on this later. It was after listening to Julie Lythcott-Haims at Palmetto High School talk about her new best seller, How to Raise an Adult, that I came to this and many other realizations. The focus of the book is to challenge parents to find ways to raise their children to become confident individuals who can be self-reliant and live enriched lives. It was after seeing students have more and more difficulty adjusting to college while a Dean of Freshman at Stanford University that she came to the realization that “something was wrong”. 

                   Having worked with children and families for almost twenty years in my practice, I have also seen the pendulum swing in different directions from laissez-faire parenting to helicopter parents to everything in between. It is truly a difficult balancing act that is influenced by several factors. Of course we are influenced by individual factors related to a child’s specific educational, physical, or psychological needs. However, we are also influenced by external factors related to community or societal influences. All are important consider, but staying focused on our original goals can help us know when to get involved and when to back off.

                   Of course many of our parenting decisions are also based on logistics. We are all busy. Morning times tend to be most problematic followed closely by homework time and bed time. Busy schedules force us to make more short-term parenting decisions to simply get from point A to point B. However, this does come at the cost of long-term parenting goals such as independence and self-reliance. Grades (and later college expectations) also influence our decisions. Should we allow for study habits to develop, for internal motivation to arise, for decision-making skills and self-advocacy to emerge at the possible risk of a bad grade? Or do we intervene for the A, for the academic award, for the principals honor roll? These are all fair questions that seem easy to answer in theory and harder to implement in real life. There are real pressures, real consequences, and scary thoughts about the future.

                   So back to the title. As one small step toward raising an adult, I will commit to stepping away from the steak and allowing my son to cut his own meat. It started with my fear of him choking and segued nicely into my rushing to get him to eat and finish his dinner. All could be easily justified, but at what expense? It turns out that even small and seemingly inconsequential decisions we make at home can have important positive consequences, and it can certainly set the tone for harder and more important decisions down the road.  

Rethinking Study Skills

One of the most common conversations I have with students and their parents is that of study skills. What we all understand about study skills varies widely and tends to include mostly anecdotal stories about what worked for us as kids. This is not completely off-base given that we now understand learning styles and even learning differences to be inherited to some degree. However, many years later, we would think that some advances in this area should help inform us on how to help our children study more effectively.

A recent NY Times Article raises this important question. I found some of their findings particularly useful to emphasize here. For example, “instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention…In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room.” While this presents some logistical challenges for families with several children, it may lead to more productive studying and ultimately less time reviewing the same information with less satisfying results. This seems to be particularly effective for students with shorter attention spans who tend to become restless after sitting still in the same room for too long.

Another concept is that of mixing up what we study at on time. We often become focused on completing one long task before starting another for fear of confusing the two tasks. However, “varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and studying a foreign language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time. Musicians have known this for years, and their practice sessions often include a mix of scales, musical pieces and rhythmic work. Many athletes, too, routinely mix their workouts with strength, speed and skill drills.”

Finally, and perhaps the biggest challenge for parents with children with busy schedules is that of time management. Research is most clear about how we need to study to increase the likelihood of actually retaining what we learn past the point of the quiz or test the next day…perhaps actually into the next semester. As the research has suggested, when we study, gradually and over time, we are able to process the information more deeply and retain this information for a much longer time. “An hour of study tonight, an hour on the weekend, another session a week from now: such so-called spacing improves later recall, without requiring students to put in more overall study effort or pay more attention.”

Just some thoughts to consider on re-thinking how we may help our children study more effectively. Its hard to change our habits and even harder to change the habits of our kids as they grow up. However, starting young and having then experience success is often the easiest way to convince them to try something different.