 This episode was prerecorded as part of a live continuing education webinar. On-demand CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs. Register at allceus.com slash counselor toolbox. So I'd like to welcome you to today's presentation, Child Development 101, The Middle School Years. This is an ongoing presentation or series that we've been working on starting with Infancy, Toddler Hood, Elementary School, talking about middle school. We'll finish up with the high school years because a lot of us, if we're not dealing with child clients, we're dealing with parents who have children or we're dealing with, guess what? People who once were children. I know it's hard to believe everybody was a kid at one point. They just may not remember how to be a kid anymore. So what we want to do is look at what are the particular developmental tasks at each stage, if these tasks are not accomplished, what's the potential fallout from it and how can we prevent it from happening through effective parenting and all that kind of stuff. But if it did happen, how can we remediate it? So we're going to review the developmental tasks that are supposed to be accomplished at this stage, examine how their thinking patterns in middle school are different than that of both toddlers and even elementary school kids and adolescents, explore ways to assist children in enhancing their self-esteem. And we're going to introduce in this particular presentation, Colberg's Theory of Moral Development. Colberg's theory is a lot less tied to age and has a lot fewer stages in some ways than Piaget or Erickson. So we're introducing Colberg here because at this point, children are able to make a leap to the next stage of moral development. And so we'll get right into Colberg. Level one is your pre-conventional morality, which is zero to nine years roughly. So I mean, it encompasses a little bit of elementary school, and then kids start jumping into conventional morality at 10 years old, which is roughly fourth grade, but we're going to start talking about it here. So up to nine years, kids have no personal code of morality. They're not thinking, is this the right thing? Is this the moral thing to do? They're not questioning authority. Moral code is shaped by the standards of adults and the benefits and consequences of compliance or non-compliance. So the little kid is going, let's see, I know that I could potentially get in trouble if I do this. Now are the benefits of doing it anyway, going to outweigh the costs if I get punished? They're smart. I mean, kids are really smart in the way they think. So it's important to kind of give credit where credit is due. In stage one, your earlier stage of development, if a person is punished, they must have done wrong. This is how the child thinks about it, which makes sense. What we've learned about children that are under nine years of age, they tend to think very dichotomously and very egocentrically. So if somebody's punished, then they must have done something wrong. They're focused on one aspect. They did something wrong. They got punished. So it's centrated, it's egocentric and it's dichotomous. Yeah, there's no other explanation for what happened. So this is really in line with pre-operational thought. As they get a little bit older, stage two of pre-conventional morality is individualism and exchange. And in your quiz, I'm not going to ask you specific details about what stage came when. What I want you to do is get the overarching concepts. And that's true for any quizzes that you will take with us. So don't get yourself all bogged down in remembering which stage is at what level and yada, yada. Basically, little kids think dichotomously, egocentrically, and they think about, is it going to benefit me? How, you know, if I do this, what are the risks versus risks versus rewards for my benefit? So then stage two is individualism and exchange. They start to recognize that there can be multiple right views. And remember, we talked about this a little bit with elementary school students starting to be able to take other people's perspectives and going, you know what, I can see where Johnny might have thought that. There might be multiple explanations for something. So they're starting to get out of that dichotomous thinking a little bit. They're starting to be able to consider multiple outcomes. They are able to understand that different individuals have different viewpoints. And this is really true of concrete operational thought. They can understand that mom thinks one thing and I think something else doesn't mean that either one of us is wrong, doesn't necessarily mean either one of us is right. And that's when it starts getting a little bit hinky at this age, trying to figure out what all that means. But once they move into conventional morality, they've started to internalize moral standards of valued adult role models. So when we say, where did you get your values from? Who taught you that? What did you learn? We really want to look at what were the influences in this child's life, because this is now what they're trying to decide. Remember, before they were able to say, OK, we've got two different perspectives. I don't know which one's right, which one's wrong necessarily. However, you know, generally they're they're focusing on what parents have said level two, they're starting to be exposed to other children, they're taking in more media, they're taking in more input, and they start identifying valued adult role models. It may be parents, it may be teachers, it may be their best friend, Sally, you know, kind of depends on the age, but nine and up peers start playing a bigger role. And so does the media. Authority is internalized, but not questioned. So any authority figures, your teachers, your parents, your pastors, your ballcoaches, are likely not going to be questioned a whole lot at this age or at this stage. And this is nine plus years, which means it can go forever. These are people who take in, you know, the somebody tells them something and they take it for, you know, that's just the way it is without questioning it. And one of the things that we find with a lot of our clients who have low self-esteem is they've taken in some of these messages and they've not questioned it and that now they're not able to feel like they live up to these messages. For example, in order to be lovable, you need to be successful and being successful is a CEO of a company or rich or, you know, driving the best car. And so they take in all of these things and they're figuring out their values. You know, we can think in terms of values and morality as they go together. What's right? What am I going to strive for? But they've taken in these values and they're not questioning them. So they're going, okay, well, in order to be lovable, I need to have all these things and then, you know, they get to be adults and, you know, maybe they're not able to be a CEO. Maybe they're not able to buy a Lamborghini. So does that mean they're not lovable? At this stage, reasoning is based on the norms of the peer group. So, you know, middle school peer group, high school peer group. When you get into adulthood, whatever your peer group is there, whether it's the people at work, the people that you socialize with, the people on your bowling league, whoever your peers are, are going to influence what your values are at that point in time. And yes, our values can change. The peer group also includes significant others. So if you end up getting married or in a domestic partnership and then you have peer group that happens to be in-laws. And whether you take in those values or not depends on your level of development in terms of are you willing to question authority? If your in-laws say something, do you take that as, you know, 100% across the board, what is? If your parents say something, do you take it that way? At the beginnings of this stage, so we're still talking, you know, middle school to high school, a lot of reasoning is based around developing good interpersonal relationships and desire to be seen as a good person by others. So basically, you want to ask, in your peer group, who's a good person? What makes them a good person? Tell me about some of your role models and what makes them good people. That gives you an idea about where their values are laying. And then encouraging them to maybe look at those values and question them in later life, you know, in middle school, in high school. As parents, we can help children navigate this a little bit as they come home and they start telling you what the values are in their school or, you know, I have to have these special pair of shoes or I have to have this or I have to do that. You know, we can talk to them and ask them, what do you think about that? Is that important to you or is it important to your peer group? And it's really hard for children in middle school especially and even early high school to separate the two. But in both middle school and high school, children really are seeking that external validation. They're trying to figure out their place in the world and we'll get to Eric's in a minute. But they're trying to feel competent. They're trying to feel lovable and accepted. So they really want to take in whatever the values are of the peer group without question because they don't want to face rejection. Stage four, maintaining the social order, comes later, like college age, but I threw it in here just to kind of give you a prelude to where people may be going. Awareness of the wider rules of society and judgments concerned upholding the law and avoiding guilt. So as people get older, they start to become aware of, you know, the laws, the rules outside of just their small microcosm. They start reading the news and becoming more aware of that sort of thing. But as far as kids go, as far as the series is concerned, we really stop at that good interpersonal relationships. So that's where a lot of preteens and teens energies and interests are focused. Ages seven to 11. Now, again, remember I said there's some overlap here. Most of this is elementary school. Children are being able to evaluate things on more than one characteristic. Okay, that's great. So they're developing this skill. By the time they get into middle school, they should be able to start evaluating things in a complex array. They're able to use inductive reasoning, drawing general conclusions from personal experiences score. They're really good at this by now. They're still developing deductive reasoning. And it takes a while for a lot of people to develop deductive reasoning or the ability to use a general principle to predict an event. So abstract and hypothetical thinking, even through high school is still being developed. So these general principles that we're throwing out there in terms of society, in terms of living, in terms of quality of life, make it really hard for them or they struggle bringing it down to what does this mean for me? So as parents, as teachers, we can bring it back down for them or help them bring it back down and go, okay, so what does this mean for you? In terms of later life, you know, reparenting or re, whatever, that we're talking about children who have had faulty inductive or deductive reasoning are probably going to have a lot more cognitive distortions. You'll probably hear a lot more all-or-nothing thinking over generalization, egocentric and thinking and personalization. So as clinicians, we can help them identify those. Now formal operational, abstract thinking and hypothesizing begin, and you can see the little wheels turning. My experiences led me to predict, this is inductive reasoning. So when I've gone to a new school in the past, it's been scary, but it's been okay. Or when I've gone to a new foster home, my experiences have led me to predict. Deductive reasoning would say, and we'll take the foster home example, deductive reasoning would say as a general rule, foster homes are supposed to be safe places where I can grow and basically hang out until mom or dad can get me back. So that's the general principle that we hope is true. Helping children figure out if whatever happens doesn't fit their reasoning. Helping them figure out why that happened is important because throughout life we're going to have outliers that don't happen. Think about stoplights. You know, stoplights, you drive up to a stoplight, it's red, then it turns green after a little while. But what happens when you drive up to a stoplight and it's red and then it blinks red and you're like, no, no, no, no, it's red, yellow, green. That's how it's supposed to go. But the outlier, the general principle is it's supposed to be red, then green, then yellow, then red again. But when that doesn't happen, how do you work that into your system? When something you expect to happen doesn't happen, how do you accommodate that? For children, you know, 11 to 14, which is really what we're talking about with middle school, the data that they have to use is really quite limited. So they have difficulty making a lot of hypotheses, or at least accurate hypotheses, because they don't have a lot of knowledge. You know, if you've only driven a few times and you've never, and you've always driven during the day, then you may never have seen a stoplight that was, you know, out of service or, you know, on flashing. So they don't have that information. It doesn't mean they're dumb. It just means they didn't have that knowledge. In school, children are starting to be encouraged to develop their reasoning by the introduction of things like algebra and science labs, where they are taking a general principle and hypothesizing what will happen if, based on these other theories. Socially, again, we're still staying with reasoning. Children may think something to the effect of my experiences with this group led me to expect, you know, to be treated fairly from anyone like them. So this is a stereotyping activity or a stereotyping procedure. One of the things, activities that you can do in group or with an individual is put up posters or give them worksheets and have general titles that are there, like teachers, and have them write down everything they know about teachers because this is their general rule. This gives you an idea of what experiences they've had with teachers. And then you can talk about exceptions to those rules. And why did that happen? Encouraging them to look at the fact that, especially when dealing with humans, it's really hard to lump everybody together because there are always outliers. The general rules. You can have an activity, and again, this is more fun to do in group, where people list general rules and you want to make it a little bit more specific, otherwise they're all over the place. But you can say general rules at school or as a general rule, this is how people interact. And have them brainstorm what they know about meeting new people, about starting a new school, about using alcohol and drugs. Any topic that you want to talk about that's going to relate to their development, how they feel they fit in, their interaction with other people, all of those have general rules. We've created schemas about all of those things. So let's start pulling those schemas out and challenging them. And we may find they are spot-on. So awesome. We also may find that they are somewhat inaccurate. And when you have multiple people sharing their general rules, a lot of times you find that their general rules conflict. And that gives you an opportunity to talk about, well, why might this be true for Sally, but not true for Sam? You can do this at home. You know, if you've got kids and they have different opinions of things, my kids just came back from a vacation. And one had a really good time and another is just stressed out as can be. And they can't understand each other's perspective to save their life. So talking about different perspectives and how one person had a really good time and the other one is just like, oh my gosh, that was so stressful. What was different for each of them? And in what way was it stressful for one versus the other? Another general rule that we talk about with regard to maybe social situations is no good deed comes unpunished. A lot of people say that, but is that true? And if we teach people this general rule, how is that affecting their psyche? If they do something good, then they're waiting for the other shoe to drop. That increases anxiety. If they think, well, no good deed goes unpunished. So, you know, hands off, I'm not doing anything for anybody else. How does that affect their interactions with other people and the world? Another general rule, if you want to say, is karma. You know, some people will talk about karma, what goes around comes around, however you want to talk about it. But then if they see somebody do something really bad and there aren't any immediate consequences, or maybe never are any consequences, how do they rectify that in their mind? So encouraging children to start learning how to question things that are going on and not to rely 100% on general rules because a lot of times there are exceptions. At this age, there's also a lot of emotional reasoning and blaming. Children in middle school, you know, they're trying to figure out where they belong. They're trying to develop a sense of competence. They're going to fail sometimes. They're going to have hiccups sometimes. They're going to have embarrassments, which for a child and most middle schoolers still don't have really strong coping skills because, hey, you know what, they're not developed yet. And that's not a knock against the kid. That just means they tend to be more emotionally reactive. So their emotional reasoning starts coming out. They feel bad. They feel devastated. So they may start blaming other people or they may change their behavior. You know, if, you know, maybe they were in class and they passed gas and, oh my gosh, people heard it. Everybody laughed. And I am never going to be able to go to school again. If you're a parent or you've worked with kids, you've probably heard a similar scenario. So that is a prime example of emotional reasoning. Something happened. They were devastated. In their mind, it is totally prominent and they just keep playing it over and over and over again. So they're stuck. And the only logical explanation or resolution they can come to is just never to go to school again. Can't do it. I need to, I need to transfer schools. So talking about the reality of, you know, what's going to happen and exploring it with the child, exploring how are they going to handle it if somebody brings that up again is going to be important. Also encouraging them to not get centrated, not get focused on that one thing. The fact that, okay, yeah, that was embarrassing. I wonder if anybody else did anything embarrassing that day and how likely is it that everybody will remember and it's going to be important enough for them to remember tomorrow or a week or a month from now. Now we move on to Maslow and remember all of these things kind of overlap because Maslow talks about our basic needs, our biological needs, our safety needs, our love and belonging, our self-esteem, and then self-actualization is off the screen. When we're talking about middle schoolers, they are still dealing with and developing their self-esteem, their sense of love and belonging, not only being loved by others, but being able to love and like themselves and be okay in their own skin, which is really hard when they're growing as quickly as they're growing and they'll have some awkward moments and they start having breakouts and their voices may be changing and there's all kinds of stuff going on that can be really overwhelming for kids and their coping skills aren't super developed yet so all of this seems just so vivid to them. What can we do as parents, adults? We can help them develop an effective, independent sleep routine so they know when they need more sleep. There are going to be times that they're going through a growth spurt and they need more sleep. They will be able to figure out how to identify that and helping them really start learning about sleep hygiene now is crucial. Nutrition, they need good building blocks for a healthy body and brain, reminding them, we started this in elementary school, but continuing to remind them to be mindful of eating for hunger and if they're having particular cravings maybe talk with you about it to figure out if there's something particular that they may need because as growing, rapidly growing little people sometimes their needs for certain minerals or vitamins or whatever go up and down so maybe we can have more healthy foods in the house that provide those foods, provide those minerals. At this age we can start making them aware of the impact of stimulants and sugar on their system. High C fruit drinks, I mean any of your fruit drinks even if they're not like fruit punch if they're apple juice have a lot of at least fruit sugar in them. So how does that affect that particular child? Make them aware that chocolate is a stimulant. Things like Coca-Cola have caffeine in them so they need to be aware of how that affects them and also how it affects their sleep. If they're drinking regular caffeinated sodas an hour before bed that's probably going to interrupt their sleep quality. Encourage them to get out and get sunlight. It helps set their circadian rhythms and it increases their vitamin D. These are all things we're doing preventatively but retroactively we can also have people do it if we have adults that came in and they haven't learned how to effectively get good sleep and just any sleep isn't good sleep. We want to make sure that they're getting good quality sleep with a couple hours of deep sleep in there. So how do you do that? What do you need to do? We can encourage them to look at that and I have other presentations on sleep hygiene so we won't go into that now. We can encourage them to educate themselves about what their body needs now. If they're seeing us they're probably experiencing some depression some anxiety, something going on which prompted them to come see a therapist so we might want to have them talk with a nutritionist or talk with their doctor to make sure they're eating a well balanced diet that supports the formation of the neuro transmitters and encourage them to get sunlight because seasonal affective disorder is real and for people who work inside all day long they can experience symptoms of seasonal affective disorder if they're in a building that has like no outside windows. I worked in a building for many many years where the inner core that I worked in had no access to the outside so you didn't know if it was raining, if it was sunny if you couldn't tell which means your body couldn't tell either and we also want to make sure they get plenty of vitamin D because inadequate vitamin D has also been linked to anxiety and depression sunlight helps with that again if it's you live somewhere like Oregon where it's really rainy a lot or it's just been a particularly rainy period or it's winter encourage them to talk with their physician to get their vitamin D levels measured medical care if you're in pain everything else just starts falling down after a period of time I mean we can deal with pain for a day or two or three but if you're in pain a lot or seemingly all the time it's important to get that looked at because it affects how you sleep it affects your ability to focus for children as they grow and like I said they're growing really fast and they can grow and they have insperts and they get aches and you know kinks and this and that that's normal so helping them figure out stretching and exercise and those sorts of things is good but if they have persistent pain or they have inordinate pain or they have pain that's keeping them from sleeping like maybe gastric reflux making sure that they get the medical care they need so they can be well rested preventing a lot of vulnerabilities emotional dysregulation when they go to school and have to deal with all the input encourage exercise for stress relief, self-esteem building to raise serotonin levels and again help them figure out how to work within this body that's theirs we went over those last time so I'm not going to belabor it this time now safety safety is becoming more of an issue at this age because children are a lot more attuned or at least a lot more interested in what their peers think about them so there's a lot more listening to words that are said, there's a lot more paying attention to nonverbals if somebody gives you a sideways look in the hallway many kids will take that very personally and feel embarrassed or feel ostracized however they feel so it's important we help them understand that this is a time where there's going to be a lot of emotional ups and downs so what can we do about it as parents and caregivers if we are in this early parenting stage where we're raising the child we can try to eliminate as much low grade chronic stress as possible now this can be from home stress if there are bills financial issues, marital issues whatever take it away from the kids they don't need to be privy to all that because kids may hear something that's a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10 as far as importance or devastation but in their mind it's a 10 because they don't have the ability to scale it and figure out oh my gosh this is going to be a problem I'm not going to be a problem eliminate that if you watch the news together it's fine, it's great some people really advocate for it and if your kids are on the internet supervised or unsupervised it's important to be able to process with them what it all means if something happens there's a bombing or this or that or the stock market takes a dump or whatever it happens to that child help them bring it back and say in the big scheme of things this may be unfortunate but for me it's not really going to make a difference or it is and this is what I need to do if there are events like I said bombings anything like that like 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina both of those the media really re-traumatized a lot of children playing this stuff and even though the older children knew it wasn't happening over and over again it kept this tragic tragic event just paramount in their mind and kept them thinking about when is it going to happen to me or am I safe so we definitely want to look at um monitoring and processing what our children are exposed to that may cause them chronic stress that may cause them to worry that they're going to lose their house or they're going to get killed or some of those big things that unfortunately our kids worry about today um if the person is an adult and was exposed to low grade chronic stress when they were growing up they may have some adrenal fatigue or HPA axis dysfunction you can google that and this is very true in people who have PTSD so you want to look and see is their stress response system responding or are they having panic attacks because their stress response system is starting to malfunction or they're depressed because they've just been so stressed for so long their bodies turned down the sensitivity and said I got no more to give you're just going to have to I got no more happy I got no more sad nor epinephrine um that I can use to balance out everything else so we want to help people figure out is there something they can do to fix this even if they were exposed to it and Dr. Gabor Mate I also linked to his video in the additional resources just a fascinating physician does a lot of discussion of the impact of low grade chronic stress on the child and the adolescent brain fabulous series if you want to watch it it's on YouTube as adults can we completely undo all the damage that's unknown but as adults if we know that there was damage done we can remediate it quite a bit so people can live happy healthy lives and recover from a lot of the stress if they realize that they've never had a recovery period from childhood and adolescence to a very stressful adulthood and there's no breathing room there's no okay things are good so we want to help them figure out how can they recover we want to help them protect themselves from emotional harm so being mindful of what is it that's important to me and how am I feeling because we are more vulnerable to emotional harm we are vulnerable if you're tired, if you're sick if you're already stressed out we need to start teaching kids as young as knee-high to a grasshopper however old that is when you're feeling not so good how can you take care of yourself this isn't gluttonous this isn't self-serving well kind of is self-serving but it's in order to help you be the best you can be because you can only run on empty for so long before you finally just kind of run out of gas teach them to stress tolerance some of the activities that work really well with kids are my favorite four three two one identify four things in the room you see identify three things you hear two things you smell and one thing you feel this forces them to kind of get out of whatever that is that's swirling and focus on something else that's in the here and now it's also a great activity for people who have flashbacks with PTSD if they can get themselves focused on the here and now which is safe as opposed to the out there wherever that was that was not so distress tolerance that's one activity they can do they can also focus on breathing Google distress tolerance and a range of activities pick one or two or three have the person try it if it works great if it doesn't try something else and kids are not going to be as persistent about finding interventions that work for them so as parents it's incumbent upon us to go how did that work if it didn't work why didn't it you know tell me what felt weird about that and then give them something else to try interpersonal effectiveness and communication skills kind of sounding like dbt again isn't it we want to help them figure out how to make friends but also how to interpret other people's behavior because it's not always about you how can you effectively communicate how can you create those win-win situations that will help keep you safe we also want them to use that when they're communicating with themselves to the back of my head because I'm thinking about the voice in the back of their heads that when they're telling themselves you're not good enough you're not smart enough you're this you're that it's important for us as parents to reinforce that they are good enough and help them develop effective communication skills inside and outside of their own head this website here dbtselfhelp.com excellent articles and activities that you can help and has all of the dbt acronyms on it so it's a really good one-stop if you just want some of the dbt tools we want to help them continue to explore attributions the global ones everybody always or I am always versus specific you know I may not be good at you know public speaking but I excel at writing or math or video games or whatever they excel at encourage them to identify any faults or any self-criticism specifically instead of globally it's not I am this always and all the time in some general term like bad at school or unlovable look for external reasons encourage them to look outside themselves to why this might be happening if they fail their test and in math let's talk about you know is it because you're dumb at math and of course I wouldn't use the word dumb with a child but for the purposes of this is it because you're not good at math or is it because you didn't get enough sleep last night because you're sick because you studied the wrong material because you know let's look at some of these other things or maybe you didn't do your homework all semester and you know so you didn't learn this stuff let's look at some reasons outside of your inherent abilities that may explain this because we can we can address those stable versus changeable you know if it's an inherent ability if you don't have I have very very poor spatial orientation when it comes to anything but loading a dishwasher my son on the other hand can recreate the house that he lived in when he was six on the computer and almost exactly and it just boggles my mind that is a stable characteristic I don't I mean I could probably improve a little bit but it's not a trait that I have changeable things are like you know my daughter is going through algebra one right now and geometry and I'm learning how to find the surface area of pyramids again I don't remember that but that's changeable it's a skill I don't currently have but it's a skill I can get we want to share this with kids kids often look up to us as parents or role models or caregivers as being perfect and we want to be able to say to them you know what I have no clue every once in a while so they realize we're not perfect but we also want to show them what we do when we have no clue you know if it involves spatial orientation I go get Sean's father and I'm like dude I have no clue you need to help him figure that out and I'll probably hang out and watch just for giggles but after you know 45 some odd years I know that's probably not a skill I'm going to develop but if it's something like finding the surface area of a pyramid then you know I'll show Haley okay we're going to go to YouTube and we're going to find a video on how to do the surface area of a pyramid I'm going to review it and then we'll talk about it together so we want to admit that we're imperfect but we also want to show them how to address any specific things that need to be addressed introduce and explore the concept of locus of control and this is a new one at this age we've talked about a lot of other things but once they get into middle school we want to start talking about what are the things in this scenario that you had control of or that you will have control of awesome what are the things in this scenario that you won't have control of if they're talking about public speaking you know that can be really intimidating for a lot of people so what is it in this scenario that you don't have control of well you don't have control of the audience if there's somebody in the audience that's going to be ugly then they're going to be ugly and fix that what can you control in that situation though you can control how it impacts you now let's talk about how you might do that so we want to introduce the concept of what's controllable but we also want to help them see that being in control or thinking they're in control of everything all the time is really stressful and or feeling like they have control over nothing all the time is equally stressful realizing that somewhere in the middle is where their locus of control is there are some things they have the ability to control and some things they don't starts helping them reduce the ups and downs of this emotionality because they know one of the things they can control is their own reaction to a situation have them start doing self esteem exercises when they're young and it doesn't have to be anything big it doesn't have to be any production encourage them to identify things they're good at remind them regularly about things that they're good at instead of just always harping on will you failed your math test or you didn't do the dishes right remember the good stuff they're hearing the negative stuff and they're just holding on to that going oh I failed again but we want to put that good stuff in there too because it seems as a general rule for every negative that they hear it takes like three or four positives to kind of counter balance it because those bounce off they don't hear that as being I'm good and unsuccessful they heard the I'm unsuccessful so we want to try to so they start hearing the yeah I'm all that but they can also handle the constructive feedback continue with the concept of acceptance and commitment accept whatever it is and who you are and that's a huge you can talk for hours about that help them start looking at acceptance and commitment therapy we talked about this last time being the best you can be for those of you who weren't here you can present a list of value words and have them identify all the words that they want to represent them and then you can have them pair it down to only eventually in its process pair it down to only the top three if you could only be known for three things what would it be and then you can start talking about what that would look like and what they're doing in terms of their activities and their actions and how they behave that is making them become more like those three things that are so important to them another thing you can do as a family if you're working with a parent is find a family value that you all agree on like compassion or I'll just use that one and you can talk about that each night at dinner or at breakfast in the morning what did you do today or what are you planning to do today to show compassion it's easier in the evening what did you do today that was compassionate for somebody or for yourself because you got to be compassionate to yourself too and this can help keep those values activities in the forefront and help them stay focused on what's important to them what they've identified as being important to them identity role confusion 12 to 18 years so middle school all the way through high school they're trying to figure out who am I what do I want to do when I grow up and that is overwhelming I remember being in college being overwhelmed by that question so you can only imagine what it's like for a 12 year old trying to figure out what group do I belong in what are my interests what am I good at the world is their oyster if you will but the world has a whole lot more facets and it's hard to find the oyster with the pearl I was going somewhere with that metaphor anyway search for a sense of self and personal identity through exploration of personal values beliefs and goals relating to many roles now in middle school a lot of it is still interpersonal where do I belong what group do I fit in with am I likeable and lovable what is my identity kind of as a friend and as a human we're not talking about occupation at this point fidelity involves being able to accept others even when there may be ideological differences so as parents we can help people work through any challenges they may have with their friends because it's unlikely to have every friend that you have be exactly on par and have the same exact belief system that you do on everything so when differences come up how can you handle them how can you accept them and still be their friend even if you have different ideological values about things it's important that we help them see this as adults if we're working with someone who didn't successfully develop that fidelity we may have adults who either change their values whatever group they're trying to fit in or whatever relationship they're trying to make work they may hold fast to their values and have a hard time befriending other people because anytime any little hint of disagreement about anything comes up they just push that person to the curb we can help adults start to see how to be faithful to themselves as well as their friendships and accept individual differences social influences at this age pubertal self-help is what it's called you know it's middle schoolers helping middle schoolers deal with all these growth spurts and oh my gosh I have a zit as big as the planet of Mars in the middle of my forehead what do I do they help each other and it normalizes what's going on social support they protect each other against turmoil and obviously you know bullying is back up in the safety area but for social support they're helping each other going yeah this really sucks or you know if somebody likes somebody else and they don't like them back how do you deal with it in middle school the relationship start forming around a lot of this stuff and how do I fit as a person identity formation they're starting to look in the mirror they're starting to form friends that have similar ideologies that have similar interests that mirror a lot of their values so again if they have this really great friend who mirrors 9 out of 10 of their values but not the 10th one do you kick them to the curb or how do you deal with that so it's important as adults for us to help them figure out what to do with that information and social influences also help with values clarification they act as a sounding board if somebody is taking something to the nth degree their friends may say you know what you are getting all riled up and there's no point in this unfortunately it can go the other way too from a parent's perspective you can see children egging each other on in the wrong direction such as toward alcohol and drugs or promiscuous sexual behavior or sexting a whole host of things that you're just like oh please don't as parents we need to be able to be there to help our children clarify their own values in terms of some of these hard topics which may be in conflict to what their friends actually believe the same is true with the exception of pubertal self-help in terms of adult formation of results that are trying to formulate what their identity is because they have been little chameleons for so long just trying to get that external validation from somebody we need to help them start being able to validate themselves and saying I'm a pretty good person I'm an okay person and then start looking at the company you keep do they reflect your values and in what ways do they enhance your values how you feel about you failure to establish a sense of identity may cause the individual to be unsure about themselves and their place in society because again they're looking for that external validation they fear at this age isolation rejection and failure they don't want to be the odd man out they don't want to be the last one picked for dodgeball they don't want to be the one that everybody snickers as you walk down the hallway and they're terrified of this what middle schoolers do or a lot of what they do is geared towards acceptance from other people sometimes that means at the expense of their own values and that's where adult role models can help out pressuring someone into an identity can result in rebellion in the form of establishing a negative identity or the opposite of what's expected so if Johnny's expected to grow up to be a lawyer like his dad Johnny may feel pressured and go the opposite way and have a criminal record as long as my arm before he's 18 because he is not going to do that um attempts to merge the expected identity with the preferred identity can also result in problems because if you're getting pressure from your parents this is how you should be and you want to be this way and you try to merge them together to get everybody's approval um in the late 90s and early 2000s they started talking about the super woman stereotype who was trying to be the mom and the wife and the housewife and the CEO of the company and trying to do everything all the time um and it caused a lot of burnout so looking at is that something that you want to do or is this your attempt to pacify and get approval from everybody tips become a student of your child or your inner child if you're an adult listen to what you want we all have that little inner child in us that goes I want ice cream um every once in a while you can give in to him or her um but listen to your inner child and sometimes if that inner child is having anxiety you need to kind of be the parent and talk yourself down talk yourself out of it use some distressed tolerance skills becoming a student of your child means learning what stresses that child out learning what that child's interested in and what that child thinks he or she is good at and what that child's values are insist on and show respect not only to others but yourself be direct but not too direct if you've ever called your kid in or you remember being called in by your parents and they said come here sit down we need to talk oh boy that that never ends well so sometimes if you're having a discussion with your child it's easier to say hey let's go on a walk we need to talk about a couple things and it's less intimidating if you're not sitting there staring at each other um feeling like you're getting grilled be available when he or she is ready which is not all the time so maybe it's at three in the afternoon maybe they come down and you're just getting ready to go to sleep and they're like hey can I talk to you about something okay um turn on the light and talk to them because they're ready they're they're there for you and also schedule some and teenage I roll bonding time we have mandatory family time every week and it's important to keep that up that way you're available one of the things that I try to do is schedule time where my daughter and I will go out shopping or somewhere because she talks a lot to me when we're in the car and says things that she wouldn't necessarily say at home around her brother and her father ask why engage in role value related discussions with and model perspective taking encourage openness and this includes with yourself if you feel that you need to do something ask yourself why why do I need to do this why do I need to and is it important to my values pay attention to what your child or you love to do too often we get kids so wound up in extracurricular activities in school and everything else we don't even know what they like so encourage them to keep up with things that they like but as adults we need to also pay attention and do some things that we like because life is about living it not just getting through it identify what you're good at and create as many chances as possible to hone skills in that area if you're a parent do the same thing for your child if they have something they really want to learn about try to help them try to nurture that keep computers laptops and televisions in common areas so you can monitor what's going on help prevent some of the sexting model and engage children in dbt skills mealtime mindfulness encourage focusing on what they're eating and being aware of how they are do a check in with each person at the dinner table guide children through distress tolerance skills put the accepts acronym on the wall or the improve acronym on the wall so children can refer to it younger children may need to look at it middle schoolers may not want to ask what it is but if it's there they'll probably consult it start discussing the concept of radical acceptance meaning accepting that reality is what it is that the event or situation is causing you pain and there's a cause for it but life can be worth living even with painful events in it so sometimes you're going to hurt and it's going to suck but life can be worth living and schedule time for non-digital fun unplug for a little while talk about sexting let them experience and accept responsibility for real life consequences teach kids to make it right with others when they make mistakes we do this not only by telling them to do that but also by modeling it ourselves when you discipline try to discipline behaviors explore the rationale and forgive quickly it's not that you are a bad child it's you made a really bad choice explore the rationale that led them to make that choice and talk it out and then be done with it forgive quickly do that to yourself too even when you make poor choices because we all do be careful when kids confess and watch your reactions because they are very very hypersensitive as adults if they didn't receive a lot of effective parenting pay attention to your internal critic you may hear your mom or your dad in the back of your head going you are such a stupid loser so it's important to silence that internal critic in our adult clients middle school children are starting to explore identity and becoming more able to take other people's perspectives they want to be a good person in other people's eyes and fears of isolation rejection and failure impairment because of their lack of knowledge and lack of experience the world and people are still relatively unpredictable and reasoning can be faulty because of the lack of experience and data they often still fall into traps of over generalization stereotyping and all or nothing thinking which whether it's an 11 year old or a 21 year old we can help them address the cognitive problems in counseling middle schoolers are better able to understand the concept of radical acceptance although it still takes people a while to wrap their head around it and they're growing as fastest toddlers so their increased vulnerabilities include awkwardness because of physical changes hormone fluctuations needing more sleep and weight changes or insatiable hunger so it's important to be aware that any of these things can make them more emotional turmoil much of their reasoning is still often emotion focused so help them become more fact focused use the CPT challenging questions worksheet distress tolerance skills are also of paramount importance at this stage because these kids even through high school have a lot of high emotionality adults who experience setbacks during middle school years may need to grieve a lost childhood they wished they felt like they should have been able to well they weren't so helping them let go of those resentments and grieve that lost childhood they can more easily develop the emotional and self esteem skills they missed as adults though so it won't take as long for them to kind of get up to speed once they grieve that and quit holding on to the I wish I had are there any questions okay well thank you all for attending today and I will see you um next week we will pick up where where we left off happy holidays and stay safe if you enjoy this podcast please like and subscribe either in your podcast player or on youtube if you want to attend and participate in our live webinars with Dr. Snipes you can subscribe at hgtbs.com slash slash all cus.com slash counselor tool box this episode has been brought to you in part by all cus.com providing 24 seven multimedia continuing education and pre-certification training to counselors therapists and nurses since 2006 you can use 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