3 great insights into couples' trust and betrayal in 4 1/2 minutes

John Gottman, the most important researcher into how couples function and fail working today, offers three great, research-based insights into what helps or hurts relationships. 

We have a choice to turn away or connect with our partner dozens of times a day and that is more important for the health of a relationship than betrayal itself.  What turning towards a partner looks like: ATTUNE, an acronym for Awareness of feelings, Turning towards the feeling, Tolerance of two different viewpoints, seeking Understanding of one's partner, responding Non-defensively, Empathy.  How CLalt (Comparison Level Alternative or "I can do better") when you are frustrated with a partner can lead to relationship destroying cascades.  Great!

What's in a marshmallow?

I mean aside from gelatin and sugar... 

This great video shows a recreation of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment.  It's funny but behind it is a really interesting and somewhat daunting piece of social science.  The Stanford psychologist, Walter Mischel, who performed this experiment in the late 60s and early 70s wasn't looking for cute video of kids contorting themselves to exercise some restraint.  He wanted to know when children develop the ability to defer gratification, when do they become able to say, "I'll suffer a little now for a payoff later".  He wanted to know what variables allow children to hold out and what internal mechanisms they used to defer getting the goodies.  It was no surprise to Mischel that older children generally held out more effectively for the doubled treat.  What was most surprising was that happened when Mischel followed up with the original test subjects years later.  Mischel and others have found that when adjusted for age at the time of the original testing, children who put off eating the marshmallow do better on SATs are more socially competent and self-assured, feel a higher sense of self-worth and are perceived by their parents as more mature.  They cope better with stress, are more likely to plan ahead, and more likely to use reason.  It turns out that learning how to defer gratification is incredibly important in our society.  No doubt some of us are genetically predisposed to be a little bit better at deferring gratification than others, but there definitely learned skills that make up a huge piece of it.  Learning to distract one's self and focus on the promised reward are important pieces that can be learned.  Another important piece which isn't often mentioned in discussion of the marshmallow experiment is trust.  In his original experiments, MIschel had some kids get betrayed by the tester in a small way before being offered the marshmallow.  Quite sensibly, they were much more likely to gobble what was in front of them rather than wait for a reward offered by someone untrustworthy.  Kids who learn that others generally follow through on their commitments will be more likely to defer gratification and reap the benefits.  Kids whose experience shows them that people don't follow through will be prepared for a world of subsistence, grabbing what they can in the moment. 

So what's the takeaway.  Give your kids practice with deferred gratification. View deferring gratification as a set of skills that can be improved.  Those old parental standbys, distraction, focusing on the future benefits need to be repeated and repeated and repeated.  And make sure to follow-through with what you said.  Deferred gratification on;y makes sense when you think you have a chance of getting the second marshmallow in the end. 

A lovely piece on the delights of Daydreaming

Brain Pickings' Maria Popova has a beautiful piece about the largely forgotten work of psychologist Jerome Singer on daydreaming, its under-heralded benefits and some pitfalls for our mental health, and how it has recently been dusted off by cognitive psychologists.  I am sure this will bring delight to my fellow wool-gatherers and middle-distance-gazers.

Is it discipline or punishment?

Distilled parenting wisdom has it that discipline helps kids and teenagers understand limits, have a sense that caring adults are watching out for them, and that the world has some order.  Punishment makes them feel bad about themselves and more out-of-control.  Tim Elmore makes the point again in Huffpost and has research findings from the University of Pittsburgh which he says back it up.  But discipline and punishment can look very similar.  Just calling something a consequence doesn't make it nurturing limit-setting.  When you are a parent or teacher, frustrated with a young person who has failed to follow the rules, it can be really hard to know if what you are doing is discipline or punishment (this assumes that the rules are reasonable). 

Elmore points out a really good way to distinguish between punishment and discipline if you aren't sure: future-oriented versus past-oriented.  If you want to discipline a kid, ask yourself,  "Is what I am thinking about doing (grounding, taking away a privilege, ignoring the behaviour, giving a warning) going to help this kid do better in the future?"  Punishment tends to be more backward-looking, while discipline is about doing it differently next time.  This takes some self-knowledge ("Am I acting out my anger or frustration or fear about what happened?") and some knowledge of the kid ("Is this consequence likely to help her -- in all her wonderful, infuriating uniqueness -- make a change?").  Sometimes just calling the question can help.  "I want to figure out what we need to do that is going to help you do it right the next time." 

One final note: as with all "parenting" expertise, if, after a fair try,  this tool leaves you feeling tied up in knots it should probably be jettisoned.  Being confident with your child or students is important and the parento-advice industrial complex can sometimes rob parents and educators of that.  Go forth and conquer, gently!

5 techniques to enhance listening in the classroom

Very no-nonsense, simple piece for enhancing students' classroom listening skills by Rebecca Alber.  This kind of teaching will benefit all students but in particular those with attentional difficulties.  

http://www.edutopia.org/blog-five-listening-strategies-rebecca-alber 

“Ah, listening, the neglected literacy skill. I know when I was a high school English teacher this was not necessarily a primary focus; I was too busy honing the more measurable literacy skills — reading, writing, and speaking. But when we think about career and college readiness, listening skills are just as important. This is evidenced by the listening standards found in the Common Core and also the integral role listening plays in collaboration and communication, two of the four Cs of 21st century learning.

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Emotional Intelligence

Great piece about the benefits and pitfalls of teaching emotional intelligence.  I kept asking myself, "what about the role of parents?"  Schools are asked to do an awful lot and parents modelling emotional intelligence for kids is extremely powerful and needs to be supported.  Nevertheless a great read by Jennifer Kahn in the NYTM.   

“ Depending on our personalities, and how we’re raised, the ability to reframe may or may not come easily. Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, notes that while one child may stay rattled by an event for days or weeks, another child may rebound within hours. (Neurotic people tend to recover more slowly.) In theory, at least, social-emotional training can establish neurological pathways that make a child less vulnerable to anxiety and quicker to recover from unhappy experiences. One study found that preschoolers who had even a single year of a social-emotional learning program continued to perform better two years after they left the program; they weren’t as physically aggressive, and they internalized less anxiety and stress than children who hadn’t participated in the program.

It may also make children smarter. Davidson notes that because social-emotional training develops the prefrontal cortex, it can also enhance academically important skills like impulse control, abstract reasoning, long-term planning and working memory. Though it’s not clear how significant this effect is, a 2011 meta-analysis found that K-12 students who received social-emotional instruction scored an average of 11 percentile points higher on standardized achievement tests. A similar study found a nearly 20 percent decrease in violent or delinquent behavior.

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— http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/magazine/can-emotional-intelligence-be-taught.html?smid=pl-share

think differently

From Reese Rickards Blog

http://www.b93.com/pages/Reeserickards.html?article=11689913

“This was sent to me by a member of the listener family.

It took me a very humbling moment to realize the second grader deserved a perfect A on his homework.

Read more: http://www.b93.com/pages/Reeserickards.html?article=11689913#ixzz2gwqTfvyi
”

— http://www.b93.com/pages/Reeserickards.html?article=11689913

Art Therapy workshop worth checking out

https://montrealtherapy.com/events/5/expressing-that-which-lies-within-art-therapy-for-awareness-understanding-and-insight/