by James Burns | Dec 25, 2015 | Bully Proof Classroom, James Burns, Kids and Stress
Only adults are under stress right? Well not really. Stress is relative to situations and age. Worrying about paying your bills at the age of forty is probably the equivalent of worrying about having your lunch money stolen at the age of ten. So kids do worry, suffer from anxiety and feel the discomfort of stressful situations as much as an adult. A parent or a teacher may not take the child’s stress as seriously because they have their own stress and the kids stress just seems to be hard to understand. They may communicate their worry to us and it may get blown off with words like “don’t worry about it, or when I was your age, or you don’t know how good you have it.”
Mom and Dad Can’t Do It
Adults don’t manage stress well in our society; and there is a lot to be stressful about: the economy, unemployment, relationships, and their own upbringing; which has everyone dragging the baggage of their own imprint from childhood into adulthood. That youth conflict that they had at the age of ten is now an adult conflict and they are still searching for answers to some of life’s most basic problems and that includes how to handle stress.
Evolution
From an evolutionary standpoint the brain stem or the reptilian brain developed first, that’s where the heart rate, respiration and adrenalin flow comes from. Something the caveman needed as he battled and hunted animals for food or ran away from when he was at a disadvantage and felt like he was going to lose the battle. That type of stress was necessary for survival and one minute or two of this type of stress helped keep this guy healthy and fed. But what happens when a brain is placed under stress for years, like thirteen; the amount of time that a kid spends in school. Stress hormones end up swamping our bodies for days, weeks, months. Research shows that cortisol, specifically, chews up the brain if it loiters there long-term. When lab rats in Israel, Germany, USA, China, and Italy were given daily injections of rat cortisol for several weeks, it killed brain cells in their hippo-campus region, leaving them depressed, anxious, fearful, immature, needy, and unable to learn new behaviors.
None of this is good for the adult brain, but children’s fast-developing brains with dendrites numbering in the millions are especially vulnerable to the ravages of cortisol. Study after study has found that children who are exposed to extremely stressful situations — via violence in the home or corporal punishment — have significantly lower IQ’s than children not exposed to such traumas.
Different Reasons For Stress
In a modern society we don’t battle saber tooth tigers, our stress come from slow drivers, our kids, our boss, and at times our spouse, and other things that frankly we have very little control over. We worry, fret, get uneasy when we have to have a confrontation and we assume too many responsibilities that we were never intended to have. For sure at times we put ourselves in bad situation because of poor choices and the lack of self control by over eating, drinking, spending, and by going crazy when the toothpaste tube doesn’t have a cap on it. Unwittingly we put our minds and bodies under constant stress and we operate in a state of constant survival. The primary function of the brain is survival of its owner and all that stress puts us in survival mode daily with those stress hormones eroding our brains. We will either run or fight but in reality as a society we don’t handle stress very well. It makes us sick, obese, it could result in the onset of high blood pressure, heart problems and type 2 diabetes. We meditate, exercise, practice yoga, seek therapy, and when all else fails we begin to believe in God again and pray.
Our Kids Need The Help
A bleak picture you say. Well yes it is, but things will get bleaker if we don’t help our kids manage stress and develop the resiliency to cope with the trials of life. There are more young people today who are anxious, depressed, and who fear age appropriate responsibilities then in past generations. Responsibilities that are just basic to a household like taking out the garbage or to school like completing a homework assignment. This fear of responsibility has resulted in higher levels of anxious and depressed adolescents than ever before. In America today, high school and college students are five to eight times as likely to suffer from depressive symptoms as were teenagers 50 or 60 years ago, according to Psychology Today.
Responsibilities Produce Pressure
When kids are not held accountable for their responsibilities and are let off the hook they begin to view their responsibilities as nothing more than pressure from adults. They are completely aware of what they need to do but lack the motivation and the desire to complete tasks or follow through on requests from anyone. This awareness with age activates that fight or flight mechanism that we mentioned earlier and kids will either start arguments when they are confronted by an adult with a request (like completing a homework assignment, or taking out the garbage) or run for the hills and disappear when there is work to be done. This now young adult feels the stress and may become anxious or depressed. They can get labeled as lazy, disaffected, unmotivated, and careless. They may seek to ease the stress through the use of a substance such as alcohol or a prescription medication that is gotten either legally or illegally and may begin to think hypochondriacally. (Believing that they may become or are seriously ill)
Responsible Behavior Can Reduce Stress
Do we need to help kids manage stress in a more effective manner or do we need to help kids take their responsibilities more seriously? Irresponsible behavior leads to stress. What is done in moderation as a child gets done in excess as an adult and adults currently are not managing stress very well. The model that the kids are getting is one that stress gets handled by drinking, eating, spending, or medicating. Mom and Dad may just be producing children that manage stress far less effectively than they did and they weren’t very successful.
So let’s teach our kids to manage stress more effectively right? Wrong. Let’s teach our kids to be more responsible adults and instead of running or fighting help them learn to see responsibility as an opportunity rather than pressure.
Looking For The Plan? Jim Burns’ New Book ” Helping Kids Manage Stress” will be out in the spring of 2016. You can pre-order in the comments section.
by James Burns | Dec 24, 2015 | Bully Proof Classroom, Coaching, James Burns, Parents
Why did our parents stand the test of time 50 years ago and stay married, and manage money so well? Why have the last 3 generations suffered so much financial difficulty, and been involved in one divorce after another? We observed our parents being financially responsible, and we observed our parents remaining married. The problem is we observed, but we never learned. It’s almost like watching a car mechanic fix a car, but never learning how to fix it ourselves. Wisdom, wise decisions, wise behavior, needs to be learned. We needed to know why our parent’s did what they did and we needed to be shown how to do it.
If society is going to develop the wisdom, common sense, or street smarts it has to start with grooming the kids of today and giving them the instruction they need to deal with money and relationships. When you get right down to it there really isn’t much else left. The challenge is great because parental role models are not as wise today as they were in days past. Parents can’t be asking their children what they want to be when they grow up, they have to taught the best career choices and then pointed in that direction. Parents have to teach their children how to handle money at a young age and show them how to save and invest for the future. Parents have to stop thinking that they don’t have a say in terms of who their children choose as a marriage partner. They have to speak up; if they believe that who their son or daughter is dating is not good for them they need to instruct them about the qualities they believe are important in a life partner. Society believes after a certain point that kids know what their doing and they’ll be fine. Parents don’t want to interfere. They don’t want to ram something down their kid’s throats. If parents don’t ram something down their kid’s throats some else will. If society is going to become wise again, it will have to spend more time teaching, and less time watching. We can start to teach our kids now when their young, or wring our hands as they get older and wonder where we went wrong.
by James Burns | Dec 24, 2015 | Bully Proof Classroom, Coaching, James Burns, Parents
Why did our parents stand the test of time 50 years ago and stay married, and manage money so well? Why have the last 3 generations suffered so much financial difficulty, and been involved in one divorce after another? We observed our parents being financially responsible, and we observed our parents remaining married. The problem is we observed, but we never learned. It’s almost like watching a car mechanic fix a car, but never learning how to fix it ourselves. Wisdom, wise decisions, wise behavior, needs to be learned. We needed to know why our parent’s did what they did and we needed to be shown how to do it.
If society is going to develop the wisdom, common sense, or street smarts it has to start with grooming the kids of today and giving them the instruction they need to deal with money and relationships. When you get right down to it there really isn’t much else left. The challenge is great because parental role models are not as wise today as they were in days past. Parents can’t be asking their children what they want to be when they grow up, they have to taught the best career choices and then pointed in that direction. Parents have to teach their children how to handle money at a young age and show them how to save and invest for the future. Parents have to stop thinking that they don’t have a say in terms of who their children choose as a marriage partner. They have to speak up; if they believe that who their son or daughter is dating is not good for them they need to instruct them about the qualities they believe are important in a life partner. Society believes after a certain point that kids know what their doing and they’ll be fine. Parents don’t want to interfere. They don’t want to ram something down their kid’s throats. If parents don’t ram something down their kid’s throats some else will. If society is going to become wise again, it will have to spend more time teaching, and less time watching. We can start to teach our kids now when their young, or wring our hands as they get older and wonder where we went wrong.
by James Burns | Dec 20, 2015 | Baby Boomers, Bully Proof Classroom, James Burns
Before the 1960’s, most people watched television in black and white. Looking back at what society was like 50 years ago, it seems like people looked at life in terms of black and white also. Things were either right or they were wrong. There wasn’t too much in between. Some of the things we viewed as wrong were disrespectful children, smoking pot, and sex before marriage. Some of the things society viewed as right were children not talking back to their parents or teachers and conservative dress. If you want to look back and see exactly what society viewed as right versus wrong, just watch some retro television and you’ll get the picture.
After WWII a new kind of generation was born in the United States. Because of the after effects of the War the United States experienced an economical boom, which resulted in high income jobs, (relevant to the time in history) with unemployment rates being almost non-existent. Education was also enhanced by the government with universities and colleges prompting people to get a college degree. Education was cheap, and was readily available. In fact, many took college courses to open up higher paying job opportunities and because of this lifestyle many people became financially secure. This financial freedom allowed people have more children and there was a significant increase in birth rates. People who were born during this period are called baby boomers and were born between the years of 1946-1964.
To me it seems like things really changed during this generation. Dr Spock came along, and his book became a child rearing bible for many people. Parents changed their approach to raising their children. It started to become in vogue for parents to be less authoritarian and more liberal in terms of discipline. The result; the baby boomers themselves took this to an extreme when they began to have children of their own. They took this more liberal mentality and kicked it up a huge notch. Baby boomer parents believed that their children had the right to decide everything. This included when they got fed, what they wanted to eat, what they wanted to wear, and what they wanted to say and do and it became the idea that at three years old children were asked to do things rather than being told.
For baby boomer children things were no longer black and white. Nothing was totally wrong anymore, and everything was a combination of colors. Parents couldn’t establish rules in black and white because it might hurt their child’s self esteem and kids began to feel good about who they were becoming for no apparent reason. The idea came into popularity that parents have to “respect” their children. The concept of respect is wonderful, but it was taken to a ridiculous extreme. Respect for children came to mean allowing them to say and do anything they wanted. Baby boomer children no longer learned self control in words and actions. This actually resulted in them not showing respect for anyone else but themselves. Basically, baby boomer children became extremely selfish, self-indulgent, arrogant, and demanding. Everything was about feeling good no matter what the cost. The end result, baby boomers have the highest debt and the poorest health with largest waistlines. The way they deal with relationships is if you don’t agree with me I am not talking to you and that means if we are married or not with the divorce rate being higher than what is reported. The research points to the fact that baby boomers get divorced later in their marriage. Their parents stayed together at all cost while the boomers hung on until their kids were grown.
We are now dealing with the children of baby boomers. They are being referred to as the millennial generation. Only time will tell what their problems will be. One thing that seems for sure, that the days of right and wrong and black and white are gone forever.
by James Burns | Dec 7, 2015 | Acoa, Bully Proof Classroom, Coaching, Teachers, The Bully Proof Classroom
My dad and mom owned a bar so at a very early age it became very easy for me to be around people who drank all the time. From the time I was a kid I thought that the whole world drank and got drunk. My dad was a binge drinker and he would go of on a bender every six months or so. He would be gone from one to three days. I always asked my mom where dad slept when he was gone and she would say in the car. I wasn’t sure who drove who crazier, mom or dad. Dad would drink and drive mom nuts, but when dad was sober mom would say things to dad to get under his skin. So I wasn’t sure if mom drove dad to drink or dad’s drinking drove my mom to make those comments. I didn’t really drink as a teenager but started to drink when I go married the first time. I drank a lot during the summer, and when I bar tended at a restaurant in Belmar NJ. As I became unhappy in my marriage I drank more and more until my drinking got a little out of control and I became frightened of my own behavior and my thoughts. If you want to discover a whole lot about an illness or a condition all you have to do is get it or think that you have it and you will start to read all there is to read about it in books, magazines, online or any place you can find the info. I came across this acronym in a book, ACOA. What the hell does this mean? Well it means Adult Child of an Alcoholic. I read more and discovered that somebody hooked a bunch of symptoms to the conditions, 13 to be exact. What an unlucky number. Let me enumerate them here:
ACOA’s
1. Guess at what normal is.
2. Have difficulty in following a project through from beginning to end.
3. Lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth.
4. Judge themselves without mercy.
5. Have difficulty having fun.
6. Take themselves very seriously.
7. Have difficulty with intimate relationships.
8. Overreact to changes over which they have no control.
9. Constantly seek approval and affirmation.
10. Feel that they are different from other people.
11. Are either super responsible or super irresponsible.
12. Are extremely loyal, even in the face of evidence that loyalty is undeserved.
13. Have money dysfunction, such as hiding it or being disorganized with it.
After reading this list and the article associated with the list I concluded that I was an ACOA, dysfunctional, needed therapy, was warped, hated my parents, and had no business being married to a girl that I had known for ten years. Great, so now what? Well now I come up with a lot of excuses for my behavior, acted more like an idiot than ever before, get into therapy, and divorced my wife. I began to walk around and wonder if every move I made was related to me being an ACOA. I began to argue for my own weaknesses and became more and more irresponsible. This went on for about five years until I started to learn the benefits of my time in history and my up bringing. There are benefits to our up bringing. Too often we look at the downside of how we were raised. I was a baby-boomer as was everyone else in my age bracket and I would bet that many of us have looked back at their life and began to wonder how did I ever get this way. I figured that I could go on hating my life or I could look at what benefit this up bringing did for me and I could use my past to help improve the future. Now I started to take a better look at things when I was about 36 years old (in case you’re wondering I am 60 now) and when my youngest daughter Grace was about 8 years old and I was about 49 I started to realize that this ACOA thing is not an emotional death sentence but rather an opportunity that everybody has to really put things in perspective for themselves and for their own children.
One day about three years ago I was riding around in the car with my daughter Grace and I told her a story about my dad that we both found very amusing and we laughed to tears. I had always told Grace stories about my dad as a matter of fact she started to ask me to tell her a story so we could both laugh really hard. One day she came to me with a list of stories, there were 12 of them about my dad that she kept track of on paper. All of the stories that I told her were stories that came out of that dreaded ACOA environment that I lived in. You know the place that screwed me up. They were so funny now that it didn’t matter that my dad had the personality of an alcoholic, all Grace knows is that I don’t, and she and I can laugh together about all of the insanity that I went through as a kid. How great is that.
