#026 Creating Agency (and getting your kids to tidy their room)

[00:06:29] Sophia Elliott: A hundred percent. Yeah. I, and I couldn’t agree more. We get these amazing little people with these amazing little brains, and then we spend the next 10, 20 years. Trying to fit them into a box and tell them to be less. Yeah. And even worse than that, that they’re broken and then they should be less.

[00:06:51] And I love everything that I read and see. And everyone who works with that strength based model of actually let’s not focus on the deficit. Yes. We need to support that and put in. Strategies and scaffolding and whatever that needs, but let’s focus on the strengths and build them up.

[00:07:16] Julie Skolnick: Truth. Be told the typical, at least in the states, we are a diagnose and fix model, that medical model of diagnose and fix.

[00:07:23] And so you’re often told. I’d love for him to be able to join that club. I’d love for him to be able to have that enrichment opportunity. I’d love for him to be able to be the leader of that thing. But until we get his behavior under control, he really can’t. And the truth is it’s the opposite.

[00:07:39] Give them the enrichment, give them the leadership opportunity, give them that passion place and the behavior will go away.

[00:07:47]Sophia Elliott:  I see that all the time with kids who go to school with my kids, where they’re getting that strength based focus, suddenly there are no behavior issues very quickly.

[00:07:57] There are no behavior issues because they’re being met where they needed to be met. And it kills me when you hear that argument of we’re not going to give this child this. Enrichment until they can demonstrate that they’ve done this until they’re a good boy or a good girl, it’s oh, I’m not going to get the good boy or the good girl, if they’re frustrated as hell.

[00:08:17] What does

[00:08:17] Julie Skolnick: that even mean? Yes,

[00:08:19] Sophia Elliott: totally.  What I did want to talk with you today about is moving along to what it is to. Encourage our children to have a sense of agency. And so when we talk about agency, we’re talking about. Feeling as though we’re in charge and having some control or say over things, would that be right?

[00:08:48] Julie Skolnick: Yeah. I think when we talk about agency, we’re saying that, okay, so first of all, let’s back up, right? Yeah. How many people out there think that they’re the frontal lobe for their kids?

[00:09:01] You’re the one who sets up all the stuff. The checklist, the double checks, the making sure the do this, do that. Why? All that stuff, right? That’s not agency. That’s taking agency actually away. The opposite of that is agency where the child actually is doing the stuff for themselves, that they’re making the decisions for themselves.

[00:09:21] And sometimes that’s super scary for parents of gifted and 2E kids  cause maybe they’re scattered right. Maybe they have this diagnosis of ADHD. And so focus is hard and attention is hard. And when you were talking about strength-based, I was actually thinking about, in that school that your kids are luckily lucky enough to be in my guess, is executive functioning is being learned through strength.

[00:09:43] So that again is agency, right? Let me give you this writing assignment that you hate. And that’s really hard because you have a writing written expression challenge versus, Hey, you. Absolutely loves snakes. Can you write me all the different snakes that you know, that’s going to be like unbelievable.

[00:10:04]So that is a way of creating it. So one way of creating agency is to use passions and strengths to teach skills. Okay. So that’s one way of creating too, another way of creating agency. And this is at home, but teachers could do this too. And that is instead of telling, instead of teaching, actually asking questions.

[00:10:28] So a child comes home and they’re frustrated about something that happened. We could be a social, emotional thing on the playground. It could be, for older kids in the hallway, it could be something in school that just was a bummer. Instead of saying, so let’s take social emotional, kids on the playground somebody’s mean to them.

[00:10:51] And instead of saying, oh, they’re just jealous. You’re so smart. Or, oh, that person is so nice or yeah, maybe you should just shouldn’t play with them. Or did you try to talk to the teacher or any of those things where we try to solve the problem. Which we all go from his parents and by the way, I parents, three kids. We all go there as parents because we want to save our children and we want them to not feel hurt. We want them to be happy. So it all comes from a really good place. But if, instead of doing those things, first of all, we validate and say, wow, that probably didn’t feel so great. Hard stop that opens up space for them to be able to actually share their feelings.

[00:11:30] Because when we try to solve a problem, it’s actually telling them, we don’t think you can solve your problem. So first we have to validate the feelings and then we ask questions like, jeez, what do you wish happened? If you could go back, how would you do something? How would you do that different?

[00:11:47] What do you think you would have? What do you wish you did? How do you think you could handle that differently? How would you advise your little sibling or your friend to deal with that? So we’re trying to actually get them to solve their problem. And this gives them agency because they learn.

[00:12:04] Through talking about it, what to do. It’s super hard guys, because we want to solve our kids’ problems because we’re grown-ups and we’ve been around the block and we see from a to Z really quickly, and we make a whole bunch of assumptions. And what that does is actually take  away agency . Yeah. Making space feelings and asking questions really allows me.

[00:12:27] Creating agency. And then I also talked to clients about setting create, we do an exercise talking about expectations. What are your expectations for your kids? You guys are thinking about it in your head right now, right? Is it that they make their bed? Is it that they brush their teeth?

[00:12:42] Is it that they get dressed? Is it that they come downstairs? Is it that they sit at the table for dinner? Is it that they, what are your, that they do their homework, but they do their homework by certain time that they’re on screens, but they get off screens . What are the expectations?

[00:12:54] So whenever I do this exercise with parents, the first thing we realized. Is, they might have the expectations in their head, but it might not be really clear to their kids. What the expectations are or the expectation might be clean your room. I’m sorry, but I don’t know  a 2E  kid who can clean their room without very specific instructions of look at your floor.

[00:13:18] And take all your books off your floor and put them in the bookshelf. Come tell me when that’s done. And then the next thing right now, you might be thinking, but wait, Julie, you just told us to create agency, right? So there’s agency within different realms. If your child has executive functioning challenges, if your child has a focus and attention challenges, then for these very specific expectations, a you need to make sure they’re clear, concise, and consistent.

[00:13:48] And B that they totally understand what that what’s meant to do. And we talk about it that way. What are a responsibilities? What are B privileges and what are C expectations around those privileges and responsibilities. And then the last and very important step is once you go through that process what are the consequences?

[00:14:14] If you don’t meet. The expectations around those responsibilities and privileges and the child. This is creating agency determines what the consequences. So an example, screen time. Oh my gosh. Screen time, everybody in the pandemic screen time has increased expo. So first we have to say, okay, you have certain responsibilities, whatever those are.

[00:14:41] And screen time is a privilege. The expectations around the privilege are that the responsibilities will be done first, that when I ask you to get off of your screen time, you’ll get off immediately. That it’s for a certain amount of time, those are all the expectations. Those are some expectations that you won’t be on an inappropriate site.

[00:15:04] That you won’t be giving your information out to people, like those are all the expectations around that privilege of screen time. And then what’s the consequence, and you have that conversation with your children. You actually ask them to help you understand what’s expected what they think expectations should be.

[00:15:19] And then the question is, okay, so what’s the consequences. If you don’t meet them. The logical consequences left less or no screen time devices taken away, whatever it is, but the child has to come up with that and maybe they’ll come up with something different and even more creative. And that’s even harder on them.

[00:15:35] Very often that happens. And now you’ve created agency you’ve created, buy-in where the child really understands B has solved the problem. And now we’re going to be able to move forward with that very specific expectation around that. Responsibility or privilege. Does that make sense?

[00:15:55] Sophia Elliott: Yeah. Yeah, totally.

[00:15:56] So it’s starting off very much around being a validation. So just acknowledging the way that your child feels. So just. It must have felt really hard to experience that today and opening that space up for them to tell you about the event and process it in that way, rather than just jumping in there with solving those problems.

[00:16:25]And I really like the cleaning the room example because I’ve certainly had this moment myself. And something that I came across in the Montessori philosophy really early with my kids, went to Montessori toddler, class and preschool. And it was that idea that  encourages kids to be independent, but it also has this very structured way of teaching children.

[00:16:49] And it’s all about not assuming any knowledge, but. Laying out the steps very deliberately. So it would be like, it’s not go clean your room. First of all, it’s this is what cleaning your room looks like. And and I do this with one of my kids in particular, who just is a hurricane in the bedroom.

[00:17:12]If we can see any floor that’s a good day. And. And it’s not that child is messy or it’s just I just see it as a complete lack of being able to manage that space. And so they need that extra help. And so it’s very much okay. We’re going to clean the room today. Would you like me to help?

[00:17:31] Yes. Okay. And I stepped through that site. Okay. What I like to do is I get the biggest things first. So let’s pull your bedspread off and like you say, The books has lots of books, let’s pick them up. And we do, we step through that and I verbalize that as I do it so that they learning how to clean a room.

[00:17:51] And it’s the is it Marie? Who does the it’s minimalist stuff, but it’s, she’s very much, I watched a documentary on her and she, as a teenager interestingly. Went in search for this perfect way to organize a house and then put things away and tidy. And if you think about, your wardrobe at home, if you say to your kids, go put your laundry away.

[00:18:23]What does that mean? Go put your laundry away. And she has this very methodical. It’ll really appeal to a lot of people. It’s like you roll your socks in this particular way, because it looks after the socks and okay. But

[00:18:36] Julie Skolnick: what that’s lacking is the idea of  2E  people are very different. So if you talk to Susan bounds, She’s going to tell you that pilers  and there’s filers.

[00:18:44] That’s what she calls them. And so if you are a filer mama parenting, a piler child, or married to a piler, there’s a big difference between linear and what’s you’re calling hurricane. And so now what we have to do is go to the why, which is why I talk about expectations, being clear, concise, and consistent because our 2E  kids will not have buy-in unless they understand why.

[00:19:09] So why does it matter that their stuff’s not on the floor? Yeah. And giving that reason because they probably can find whatever they need or maybe not, but they don’t care. It doesn’t bother them. It’s certainly, there’s the mamas many mamas who are trying to either, back you meet or not have, critters come in to the bedroom or, leftover food and God only knows what else is under there.

[00:19:34]But so now we have to incorporate for them how we can make this okay. For them as opposed to. Putting our needs on top of how they, I try really hard to make my kids space their own. Yeah. So that might mean closing their door.

[00:19:51] Sophia Elliott: Yeah, totally. And I’m not in any way suggesting that everyone go home and Marie Kondo their kids because I couldn’t do that.

[00:19:58] I, if you look at my cupboard. I aspire to folding, but I can’t I just it’s beyond my capabilities. So I have no expectations of that as for my children. And I agree it’s very much respecting who they are and who you are as well, but trying to find that balance.

[00:20:17] Julie Skolnick: Yeah. And that teaches them actually, how to advocate for themselves.

[00:20:20]The advocacy piece comes into this agency and giving them the chance to tell you why it’s okay and why it’s not okay. You to tell them when it’s not okay. Them to tell you why it’s okay. And come someplace in the middle.

[00:20:34] Sophia Elliott: Absolutely.

[00:20:35]Julie Skolnick: We’ve,

[00:20:36] Sophia Elliott: I, I dunno if this is just  us or , your typical household with gifted kids, but we do a lot of talking about the why  we always have, with my first, I found very early on that if I explained why, this is a safety issue.

[00:20:53] This is why I’m asking you to do this or not to do this, or we need to do this so we can do that. He was always very reasonable and that worked, as a parenting tool. So we’ve definitely carried that through their other kids. And it’s a big part of, the way that we communicate when we’re asking stuff of our kids and yeah, I just find that works amazingly

[00:21:19] Julie Skolnick: and it’s really, so many people are frustrated by the, all the why’s, but it’s actually.

[00:21:26] Goes towards executive functioning it’s goal setting. If you understand why then oh, the goal is to meet that reason. Yeah. Think of it. So

[00:21:36] Sophia Elliott: tell us a little bit about what is executive functioning for parents who haven’t come across that term yet.

[00:21:43] Julie Skolnick: Okay. Sure. So executive function functioning, if you think about it, as, your brain as the CEO.

[00:21:51] It’s the one making all the cool creative decisions, but then how do we actually implement, how do we organize, prioritize start, continue through boring tasks to get to the other side, to get to that goal. So it’s really regulating our it regulates our emotion, our mood, and our attention. That’s what executive functioning is.

[00:22:17] And. Very often gifted and for sure 2E kids have executive functioning challenges. And part of that is because they’re crunching more data. So when I hear, for instance, slow processing speed. I never use that term. I’ll say deeper processing speed because what’s happening is take a computer that’s crunching X data.

[00:22:37] Take your gifted 2E  computer and it’s crunching X plus X plus X data. It’s going to take longer. Yeah. So it’s also going to be harder to organize. It’s going to affect working memory, right? So executive functioning is all that organizational that you think about, but executive functioning is also imperative to social success.

[00:23:03] How do I know what to say when not to say it, who to talk to first and who, especially in a group situation, somebody said this, somebody else said that and who do I answer first? And who do I look at? How do I look at them? That’s all executive functioning. So it really regulates our attention, our mood and our emotions.

[00:23:23] You think about it, if your CEO is the brain right. And making all these decisions, all the cool creative ideas the executive functioning is like the executive assistant. It makes it schedules. It makes sure you’re there on time. It’s and that’s executive function

[00:23:39] Sophia Elliott: and a lot of 2E  kids and gifted kids really struggle in that regard.

[00:23:43] So it’s important to acknowledge. As we’re sending them off to do different tasks or have different expectations, that can be a very real challenge.

[00:23:54] Julie Skolnick: Agency comes in there because we’re going to ask them to solve their problems. How can we organize this? How can, when do you have to be there tomorrow?

[00:24:01] How can you make sure that you wake up? Do you want to eat at school while you do? Okay. So how will you make that happen? Okay, so let’s talk about what kind of food that you need. You need a pro, so you need a protein, you need a fruit, you need a vegetable and let them  affectuate .

[00:24:20] Now again, if you’re using strengths for instance, if you’ve got an adolescent and their executive functioning is very challenged, I promise you their music is organized impeccably. They’ve got it by genre. They’ve got it by mood. They’ve got a playlist for walking the dog. They’ve got a playlist for when they’re mad at mom, they’ve got to play it right.

[00:24:45] And they do that, all that by themselves. An avid reader knows exactly how they’ve organized their books on their shelf. There’s certain things. And so then we need to extrapolate from those strength based experiences into the boring stuff, like writing a paper, how you’re organized your music and how you have liked the general stuff you really love.

[00:25:06] That’s like your introductory paragraph, and to extrapolate and use what they’ve actually already done to show them how to. Put it onto something that’s less interesting

[00:25:16] Sophia Elliott: and show them that they have the skills, they can do it. And yeah, and I think there’s a lot of power in showing someone that, with examples that they’ve already done, this it’s just, to just in a different way.

[00:25:33] And I a scenario that comes to mind, one of my children. Is really good with the skateboard, just a natural. And my others are, taking it out but assumed that they could do that the other child was doing because they could do it and went down this rather large ramp, which was way too big for them.

[00:25:57] And of course, inevitably fell off an ordinarily. That would have been the end of that because. Not being able to do something is very unusual for that child and the perfectionist. And that would have just been the end, but managed to work through it. And we’re at the skate park and they’re saying, I just, I can’t really, I can’t do this.

[00:26:21] And I said it’s all just physics, right? Yeah, the physics kit, isn’t this all just physics. Like what laws have we got going on here? And they thought about that for a minute. And they’re like, oh, that would be the third lore of start, five minutes about the physics of skateboarding and happily

[00:26:39] Julie Skolnick: hopped on the scale of reframe.

[00:26:41] Great reframe. Yeah.

[00:26:43] Sophia Elliott: Yep. Yep. Because that’s, that was the language and it’s doing great now. So that was a nice parenting moment. Not that they’re all like that, but they’re good when they come

[00:26:53] Julie Skolnick: together. Yeah. You

[00:26:58] Sophia Elliott: okay. So the importance of helping our children create agency, because I feel like what’s at the heart of this is very much, how we started off this conversation is that they have these amazing brains.

[00:27:11] They’re these awesome little people and, and so two of my kids are 2E  as well. And. That additional layers of quirkiness that comes with the 2E-ness is something that we really want them to keep a tight hold on to, into adulthood because the world needs more quirky, different people living in there and in the, being who they are and looking at the world differently and coming out with different ideas.

[00:27:44] And so I feel like. This process of helping them to create agency as a young person, as a child is going to really provide those skills as an adult to continue to have agency over themselves and advocate for themselves in adulthood and is really setting them up with some key skills for life.

[00:28:04] Julie Skolnick: For sure.

[00:28:05] And you feel good. You feel better when you’re in charge when you make decisions. And it’s a great way to learn that when you make mistakes that’s a really long lasting lesson. That it’s a good thing, but if you don’t have agencies, so you never make mistakes, it then becomes really hard to make mistakes because of perfectionistic.

[00:28:24] Gifted person really opens you up for yeah. Different experiences and to rely on yourself at the end of the day. And this can start very teeny, tiny, when the child’s getting dressed. Okay, you got to pick a pants and the shirt or what do you have to pick? What are the things, what are the items you have to wear?

[00:28:46] Okay. What are you going to put on first? Why. Yeah. And let them start thinking about those things.

[00:28:52] Sophia Elliott: A lot of, Hey, Google, what’s the weather today and cause it’s never the same. It’s, one week to the next it’s hot or freezing or whatever. And so yeah, a lot of, Hey, Google, what’s the weather today before they figure out what they going to wear and.

[00:29:10] And I try and convince them to put a jumper on because it’s eight degrees and we had a conversation but they’d certainly have agency and say I’m taking the jumper off later mum. And guess what

[00:29:21] Julie Skolnick: if they went to school without a jumper, which I’m guessing is a coat. Yeah. I guess they would learn.

[00:29:31] Absolutely. And that’s creating agency

[00:29:34] Sophia Elliott: so permission to not fight over the coat or jumper and let them learn the lesson.

[00:29:40] Julie Skolnick: Yup, absolutely. That’s a good one. And never forget it again.

[00:29:49]Who’s loving nagging right now. Not what any of us wanted to do.

[00:29:53] Sophia Elliott: No, I didn’t sign up for anything. Absolutely not. Julie, I just, I love that this has been so very practical tips in that for parents and ideas. And I know that you do a lot of work with parents and teachers and  you’ve got a couple of different websites that people can check out.

[00:30:12]We’ve got with understanding comes calm.com. Let’s talk  2E .com  and 2E resources.com. So tell us what we can find each one of those. Of course, I’ll put all of this in the show notes as well, make it easy for people to find.

[00:30:27] Julie Skolnick: Great. Thank you for asking. So with understanding comes calm.com, which by the way, is the God’s honest truth with understanding comes calm..

[00:30:37] So that’s why I’m called what I’m called that you can think of is like the umbrella. Organization. And that’s really where I do my consulting. I consult with parents all over the world. I have some great, wonderful clients in Australia, and I love working with parents. I love working with teachers and actually also too, we adults.

[00:30:59] So I mentor two, we adults as well. And this is something that I do one-on-one or one-on-two, if there’s a couple that I’m working with as parents or as adults. And then also under with understanding comes calm, comes all of my speaking that I do and all of the podcasts that I’m interviewed on and all of the videos that I create as far as when I go out and I’m talking with them.

[00:31:23] People at conferences, as well as my newsletter, which is free called gifted and distractable. So all of that you can think of as is under with understanding comes calm, then we have let’s talk to we.com, which you can still also get to through the, with understanding comes calm.com site, but let’s talk to each.com is really the place where I produce conferences.

[00:31:43] I’ve been producing virtual conferences. Since 2018, sometimes they’re for parents, sometimes they’re for teachers. And guess what? In November of 2021, I will be launching my first adult conference, which is going to be awesome, including some of the topics you’ve already brought up, which is sex and bringing up gender differences and the cross section of gifted, but lots of stuff for adults.

[00:32:06]And then I also have a community under let’s talk 2 E . So I do parent empowerment groups, their nine week courses. And they include live webinars and Q and A’s from me as well as community building. So parents from all over the world come together. It’s really beautiful. The support and the, oh my God.

[00:32:24] I finally feel understood. And there’s like the veterans. And then there’s the newbies. And everybody learns from everybody. And I always have an awesome guest who comes on for the ninth week. And then 2E resources.com was a dream of mine. I’ve had that URL for five years, but it just launched.

[00:32:41] Almost not quite a year ago and you can go there for free to E resources.com. And please do, because you can find a ton of  2E resources from all over the world. And it’s organized in five categories, education, clinicians, consultants, associations, and enrichment, and that’s a listing place of lots and lots of different  2E  resources.

[00:33:02]Check it out. And if wonderful  2E  resources, please connect them with us. We even have a coordinator who just handles that for us. So that’s everything. And then all over social media. So with understanding comes calm has its own Facebook group. And then we have a teacher’s lounge. Let’s talk to the teacher’s lounge.

[00:33:20] Let’s talk to the parents and the new let’s talk to we adults as well as everywhere on. Any social media channel, where you are. And we post all sorts of great stuff, articles, information events on our social media. So please like us join us. We’d love to.

[00:33:37]Sophia Elliott: That sounds amazing. What a wealth of resources there for everyone and, at the end of the day I think the more community we have around us, the better and the more people we can lean on resources we can get access to as parents helps us feel like we’re not alone.

[00:33:54] Now, this actually, there’s a whole bunch of folk out there going through very similar challenges and a whole bunch of folk with lots of great answers and ideas for us as well. Also love that in November, you’re doing the adult conference and it was in our last quick chat that we had with that very Sage reminder that if you have 2E  children, there’s a good chance.

[00:34:18] You have a 2E  parents, let’s be real. If you have a gifted kid, there’s a good chance you have gifted parents. Yeah. And I think, and I find. That journey often comes a couple of years after you figure stuff out for your kids. He’s

[00:34:34] Julie Skolnick: not

[00:34:34] Sophia Elliott: funny. Yeah. Isn’t that funny?

[00:34:38] Julie Skolnick: Who would have thought?

[00:34:40] Because I have adult clients from 18 years old to 70 something and the 70 something just found out. Yeah. Isn’t that interesting? Isn’t that insane? Bravo for him. And it’s, it informs sometimes we will reach out and I have different sort of intakes for adults versus parents.

[00:35:04] And sometimes they’re like what if it’s like the adults as well? I do have 2E , we do everything. You can’t, you don’t separate, it’s important. All of this affects you. So if you have a, if your kid has an over excitability, you probably have. And and it’s usually more than one overexcitabilities right.

[00:35:20] So we have to think about, and there’s so many aha moments and emotion. Regulation is always a part of what we talk about, because again, the world is just not made up for this incredibly fine tuned, very strong antenna out there in the world called the 2E  person. Yeah.

[00:35:40]Sophia Elliott: And I’ll bet for that 70 year old, that sense of relief and a huh was no less than, oh yeah.

[00:35:50] Like you’re 18, 20 year old. I can imagine that it came as a huge relief and just epiphany for that person.

[00:36:00] Julie Skolnick: So people always ask me, is it too late? And it’s never ever too late. It’s never too late.

[00:36:08] Sophia Elliott: Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us today. That was a wonderful episode and really great to talk about that sense of agency and validation, those tips for parents.

[00:36:19] So thank you really appreciate it.

[00:36:22] Julie Skolnick: Pleasure. Thank you for having me. What a great podcast you have. Really. I’m sure. Helping so many people all over the world.

[00:36:29]Sophia Elliott:  Thank you. Do appreciate that.

[00:36:32]