The Brain and Thinking - early childhood focus

Unconditional Self-Acceptance (USA) is a useful anti self disturbance belief resource developed by the grandfather of cognitive therapy, Dr Albert Ellis. He understood he was imperfect but he determined early on in the piece that despite his flaws he was always OK. OK, according to the gospel of St. Albert meant that he and everyone else could believe their way into unconditionally accepting themselves.

Unconditional self-acceptance renders a person psychologically resistant to the slings and arrows that others may cast their way in the form of put down, harsh criticisms; unfair and damning, and all manner of failings and personal imperfections.

This of course comes with practice and determination, vigilance and hard work. So how does one become self-accepting? This has been the focus of many or most of this blog content e.g Unconditional Self-Acceptance, but in a nutshell USA is knowing that a persons worth is not negotiable; it's a given, we're born with it!

However people are suggestible and are continually making sense of what's happening around them. If we receive information from around us, especially from significant others, which encourages and values our person we can learn to see ourselves in a positive light. If our carers and mentors address what we do and not who we are, we learn not to define ourselves, ascribe our total worth to aspects or personal traits we have developed. Be they good or bad we are not them. We can act badly and not 'be' bad and we can act 'goodly' and not 'be' good.

If on the other hand our mentors and significant others tell us we are bad because we do bad e.g. 'You are hopeless. You never do anything right!' we put two and two together and we compute four to mean, irrationally, that we are bad when we do bad etc.

These ideas can be taught successfully to younger folk in early childhood settings and the video below suggest we start off by establishing that as thinkers we direct and control how we feel and behave in response to life events. Our thinking can be helpful or unhelpful and these and other things will be explored through this video and others which will consider how we can help younger children to be happier and healthier unconditional self-accepters!

It's My Privilege To Be a Teacher

It's been been a while since the last post and life continues to unfold often as planned and anticipated and at other times in a tangential manner. We seem to have a trajectory in mind, a vision how things might pan out, a virtual template to guide us on our way. Things don't (why should they?) always go as imagined but ain't that the spice of life? The odd happenstance from left field (where did that come from?) will issue forth a challenge to meet and negotiate, an invitation perhaps to reach beyond yourself. Or indeed it may be an unanticipated delight that stops you in your tracks and lays a subtle smile across your hitherto sullen (feels that way) countenance.  The odd curve ball that's hard to lay a bat on and strikes you out before making a play! The tee off goes awry and your 4th golf ball goes off into the rough never to be seen again and it's only hole 2 of 18! Shut up already with your sporting analogies I can hear some say. OK I hear you!

So you've decided to feel miserable and resent that today is a day where you don't want to go to work but you have to! You know the joke where the mother is trying to get her child to get out of bed? You know where she says you have to go to school because 'You're the teacher!' That kind of day.

Then you arrive at school and automatically you start to do the intuitive things that have made up your routine forever it seems. And you are soon in the groove and you control what you can and your only expectation is to expect anything. Ain't that the way of schools? Of teaching? Of learning? Of life? Of course it is and why should it be otherwise I ask? To do so might suggest a view that perhaps all should or indeed can go the way I want it to go i.e. My Way! Now that rings a bell ...

But it is folly to assume that all will be fine. I recall my dad telling me of the ass you and me become when we make assumptions about how things should be.

Then you begin to take in the sights and sounds and feel of the place as you stroll along the corridors and poke your head into the classrooms and engage with colleagues and students and slowly you are reminded why it is you get out of bed in the morning.

You see:

• Students skipping to greet their school mates in the yard as they discard their school bag somewhere approximate to where they line up
• The teachers in a shared unit with other helpers and volunteers preparing breakfast for all children, especially for those that have had none
• The parent/carer who has to rise in the wee hours to get her child who has special needs ready for school and who offers a big smile as she drops her off at school and hurries on to work
• The students who spontaneously hug their teachers in a genuine gesture of affection and respect
• The smiles exchanged between students and their peers and between teachers and their students
• The teachers who meet to talk about the day, to share ideas - readying themselves for teaching and learning
• The teachers who treat the child who seems not to be able to shake off those persistent nits in her hair or who showers and dresses the child who has slept in the same clothes for several nights
• The teachers who put a food hamper together every week for struggling families and who will deliver it after hours if need be
• The teacher who has spent 3 hours after school has ended on the phone to authorities to get support for a child who is at risk going home
• The student through silent tears who trusts you enough to tell you of the heartbreak and pain of missing his dad who suicided only two years ago and how he has resolved to be the best he can be
• The child who starts crying because she is reminded she won't see her dad for a while because he is in jail and how her mum will go into the bathroom and sobs on the bathroom floor (and she cries again) whilst big sister makes tea
• The teacher who says 'I'm getting through to this child at last. She's beginning to smile again!'
• The child who as a five year old would bang his head on the floor to articulate the pain of abuse and who two years later smiles more often than not
• The child who begins to understand that he isn't bad for doing bad but is always worthwhile

As the day unfolds we engage with students in many ways in different situations and as it ends we are reminded why it is we get out of bed in the morning. Because what teachers do matters to our young charges. We are challenged to respond to their needs at every level and in doing so they teach us more than we can ever teach them. It is a privilege to be a teacher and to be accepted into their young lives.

This is a note I received today from a student and teachers get many such gifts in the course of their teaching careers. These words in a note of appreciation from this young person is one major reason why I get out of bed in the morning and it prompted me to write this.

REBT, Growth Mindset and Rational Emotive Behaviour Education

REBT holds that our response to happenings/events, are linked to the habits of thinking or thinking rules that we have constructed over time. We can as a result of our social learning conclude certain things about our nature and capabilities. These can indeed be fixed and Albert Ellis talked about the debilitating effects of rigid, inflexible and immutable thinking habits that cause severe emotional suffering like anxiety, depression anger and shame. When gripped by such extreme emotional disturbance/turmoil the individual is in a sense unable (incapable) of acting in what we may consider constructive and progress/goal orientated ways. Fixed mindset predicts fixed outcomes. As these fixed thinking rules remain and continue to be practiced their truth is unchallenged; they are absolute. Can they be changed? Yes they can but with a lot of work!

According to Dweck: 'In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that’s that ... In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed ...They don’t necessarily think everyone’s the same ... they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it.' (Morehead 2012).

Ellis' ABC Theory explains how irrational beliefs (B) can be challenged at (D) - Disputation of Irrational Beliefs (DiBs). The first task of the educator/mentor/counselor is to alert the student/client to the relationship of B to C where B = beliefs, C = emotional behavioural consequences of A = the activating event). Refer here Thinking Feeling Doing (The ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance) for more on this.

Growth Mindset Continuum ©Giulio Bortolozzo

The above diagram is my take on Growth Mindset as it is promoted and developed by Albert Ellis' ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance. This model is delivered to teachers students and parents via the successful Rational Emotive Behaviour Education program adopted by several schools in South Australia. The aim is to alert students to the notion:

• that THINKING FEELING and BEHAVING are linked (Intellectual Insight)
• that Fixed Mindset Thinking (Irrational) is self defeating
• of actively and persistently challenging Fixed Mindset Thinking to change it to Growth Mindset Thinking (Emotional Insight)

Learning and success is linked to how we view (believe about) ourselves, others and life in general. The irrational beliefs of  'I am dumb/incapable' can be said to be fixed i.e. this is 'me', my 'nature' my 'lot in life'. The belief that 'I need the approval of others' to be happy and successful can also be regarded as a fixed idea about self in relation to others. And the belief that when things get tough one automatically defaults to the idea that it is not worth trying because of the 'fixed' construct that 'I am incapable/can't' (learned helplessness) anyway!

Ellis would say, I believe, that a fixed mindset is one which is comprised of irrational (stops us from pursuing our goals) thinking rules. The headset as outlined above will render the individual anxious (I don't want to risk failure) and/or depressed (people will think I'm dumb) and ashamed (I shouldn't be so dumb. I'm a loser!) What chance then for this person to progress and grow?

'Fixed mindset people dread failure, feeling that it reflects badly upon themselves as individuals, while growth mindset people instead embrace failure as an opportunity to learn and improve their abilities.' http://www.edutopia.org 

Help students become aware of their destructive fixed mindset (irrational) thinking rules. Challenge the veracity of such dogmatically held beliefs with a view to deconstructing them and replacing them with more rational (self/other helpful) thinking rules i.e. a growth mindset that will help thrive even through the adversity of failure, rejection and change. This is being successfully done in South Australian schools through the Rational Emotive Behaviour Education program!

Growth Mindset, Happier Kids!