Parents, I don’t know if you have noticed this, but there seems to be an intense energy amongst the students this month. It’s like they are holding this giant ball of energy just beneath their skin that is ready to burst out and cause chaos. This happens every year around this time. They are just coming off a long break, and they are inside more than semester one due to bad weather. This is also a time of year where there are lots of competitions, but not as many events and parties as the beginning or end of the year. For us, it feels worse this year. But the truth is there are just more students, and chaos thrives with big numbers.
So how do we proceed safely without taking all of the fun out of everything? Well, step one starts here: we give the students the tools they need to learn some self-control. A lot of these issues are rooted in a lack of impulse control. Kids do not typically come by self-control naturally. It is something that must be learned. It’s not a ton of fun for kids to learn self-control, so how do you get them to sit down and actually listen? You don’t. If you thought the answer to teaching self-control was to lecture them, you are wasting your time. You might think that you have their attention, but really they are in their heads trying to think of anything else and count down the minutes until they can get out of this conversation.
We started with games. We played games that included people in the middle of a circle being able to touch things like balloons or marbles while the people comprising the circle weren’t allowed to touch them for any reason. Kids want to hit a balloon that is coming at them. That is a natural inclination. But giving them a tangible reason to break that habit is a great demonstration in self-control. It makes them experience the impulsive behavior of wanting to hit that balloon or scoop up that marble, realize that they are having that desire, and then have to manually tell themselves not to do it. For those who couldn’t handle the impulse, they didn’t get yelled at; they were simply out of the game. It wasn’t completely a cakewalk for those in the middle either. At some point, restrictions were added, like don’t touch the blue balloons.
Games of this nature work well because it puts the child in control of whether or not he will manage his impulses and stay in the game. Those who got out weren’t in trouble, but they also didn’t get to play the game anymore. This is a very effective strategy for children who are competitive by nature. Games are a great way to engage children in learning lessons, but life cannot be all about games. To teach self-control, you need to focus on the part of the game that worked well. There were very clear expectations of what should/shouldn’t be done, and the child was in control as to whether or not he would succeed in the situation.
Gifted kids like to feel like they are a part of decision making. If you can reframe some things at home so that they can make a choice with their behavior as to whether they get to do something or not, you are empowering your child to manage himself better. For example, I know a lot of parents who have some kind of condition that must be met before screen time can occur in the evenings. This might be chores or homework. Some even require physical activity before gaming. In that instance, it puts the power in the child’s hands to become disciplined and do what is expected of him to get what he wants. Similarly at school, we have reading trophies in the elementary for children who read 100 books in a school year. The children who do not meet that goal are not admonished, and there is no impact on their grades. They just don’t get a trophy at the awards ceremony. For those who don’t get the trophy, oftentimes one year of seeing many of their classmates get called upon to receive an award is enough for them to get disciplined and read more the following year.
These “cause and effect” type lessons have a great impact on developing self-control strategies. It teaches kids that there are consequences and rewards in life based on your actions. The earlier they can learn this lesson, the better. We are doing our best to teach them these strategies at school, but they need them at home as well. It’s not fun to have self-control, so children are not naturally interested in learning self-control. However, without self-control, they will struggle in their future higher education and professional lives. The world does not reward adults without self-control. Start giving your child these tools now to have a better future.
-Bria