Monthly Archives: March 2016

This is Your Child’s Brain on Screen Time. Any Questions?

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CaptureAt least once a week in my office I will witness a child completely breaking down when asked to turn over an ipad or other device.  The tears and outbursts seem more than just a tantrum and have many features of an anxiety or panic attack.  Parents often confirm that the battle over computer and video games is so great they have thrown in the towel rather than endure their child’s distress.

In full disclosure, I am also the parent of a teenage boy with whom I regularly find myself negotiating screen time.  I know all too well the frustration and helplessness a parent might feel as my teen tries to have me understand how vital his group chats and social media accounts are to his well-being.

As a therapist, however, I see an increasing number of children who are experiencing increased moodiness, impulsivity and difficulty paying attention. Parents and teachers refer children to me who are finding it difficult to organize themselves, complete tasks and make and maintain friendships. Often these symptoms are viewed as indicators for a diagnosis of ADHD or Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD) and pharmaceutical treatment becomes the de facto treatment, before any exploration of screen habits is considered.

While the activity may provide them with short-term relief (and keep car rides and long office and restaurant waits quieter for parents), new medical research shows that extended screen time is changing the structure of children’s brains with serious impact on cognitive and emotional processing.

Shrinkage or loss of brain tissue in the frontal lobe has been documented in numerous studies of those addicted to internet and video gaming. The pre-frontal part of the brain is responsible for executive functioning and impulse control. Other brain damage associated with screen usage has been documented in the areas responsible for empathy and in the paths that connect the higher function brain to the emotional response center, resulting in a lower ability to regulate emotional responses – hence the tumultuous melt-downs.

During action-based games, the brain’s fight or flight response is triggered just as it would be in a real-life threat.  This causes the release of stress hormones which have an adverse effect on the body.

Suggesting that your child is addicted to their tablet isn’t just hyperbole.  Research also shows that playing video games releases dopamine in the brain, a chemical associated with reward processing and addiction.  Your child may be experiencing cravings similar to what is experienced in drug and alcohol addiction.

California psychiatrist Victoria Dunckley suggests before accepting a diagnosis of an attention or mood disorder, parents may want to try a media/screen fast to rule out screen time as a culprit.  Two weeks without computer, phone or television may seem like the equivalent of a strict gluten/dairy/sugar fast and nearly as difficult.  However, it does offer a chemical-free way of isolating problematic behaviors and their potential causes.

If cold-turkey fasting feels impossible, consider a two week period during which screen time is not permitted during the week and for no more than two hours a day on the weekend.  Engage your child in tracking moods, sleep, and physical symptoms like headache and stomach aches.  Replace the screen time with at least 30 minutes a day of outdoor play and exercise.

At the end of two weeks, review with your child everything you and they have noticed.  Compare results with classroom teachers to see if there are improvements there as well.  If little has changed after two weeks, this will be valuable information for your child’s pediatrician or therapist as you pursue other causes.

Even if, in the end, you decide that that it’s unrealistic to completely eliminate screen time from your child’s life, you will have taught them to pay more attention to signals their body sends them about their needs, wants and desires.  And you may find they discover a renewed interest in some forgotten pastimes as well.

 

Anxiety in the Classroom

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CaptureTake a moment, right now, and pay attention to what’s going on around you.  How are you seated in your chair?  Is there tension in your neck, shoulders, jaw? Is it noisy where you are?  Do you feel rushed to finish this article and get on to your next task?  Close your eyes for a moment and take a few deep breaths. What do you notice now?  Did anything change in your posture?  How about your heart rate?  Maybe nothing is different.  Notice that too and notice how you feel about that.

That reflecting you just did was possible courtesy of your pre-frontal cortex.  That’s the part of the brain that allows you to regulate your emotional responses and override any automatic behaviors or habits.    It is central to self-regulation and empathy.  And it doesn’t fully develop until the mid to late 20s.

When we experience something threatening, the fight or flight response is immediately triggered and the part of your brain that deals with emotions hijacks the thinking part of your brain.  The prefrontal cortex, when activated, can serve as the ‘brakes’ to this response, lowering the alert signals and allowing you to assess the situation with more reason.

Children, however, do not have a fully developed prefrontal cortex to help them easily regulate high emotions.  What might not seem to the rational, adult mind to be more than an annoyance, is perceived in the child brain as a threat.  Fear triggers the release of stress hormones and if the child is unable to regulate the response, anxiety and then panic may set in.

Anxiety, in and of itself, is not an affliction.  Anxiety helps us to be alerted to our surroundings.  It can propel us to action and improve our performance. Anxiety is a signal to us that there is an imbalance between what we feel and what we think or know.  Ruminating about the past and worrying about the future represent a skew towards overthinking.  Becoming overwhelmed by emotions represents the other end of the pole.

What to Look for and How to Address Anxiety in the Classroom

In order to help children manage their anxieties we need to first recognize some indicators that a child may be experiencing high levels of stress. Anxious children may verbally express worries about grades, friends, physical activities etc.  Preoccupation with getting the right answer or completing tasks perfectly are also indicators of anxiety.  Restlessness, difficulty focusing or withdrawal may also be observed in the anxious child. These symptoms can often be mistaken for attention deficit disorder (ADHD) prematurely.

All children, whether they experience high levels of anxiety or not, can benefit from breathing and relaxation exercises to help them become more aware of body sensations and emotions.  Here are some easy to implement strategies to combat classroom anxiety:

  1. Use language children can understand to describe what they might be feeling. Instead of anxiety, try words like ‘worry’, ‘afraid’, ‘pressure’.
  2. Incorporate breathing, stretching and relaxing exercises into the daily schedule. Before beginning a new subject, ask children to pay attention to their breathing, see if they can fill a ‘belly balloon’ with a longer, slow breath and then blow it out as if they are blowing out the candles on a birthday cake.   Invite children to comment on what they notice this changes in their bodies.  Invite children to tense and then relax their muscles to help them recognize the difference.
  3. Teach children to celebrate mistakes as opportunities to learn. Neil deGrasse Tyson recently lost a popular radio quiz show game on NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”.  When the host asked if he was embarrassed to have gotten two out of the three questions wrong he said “If I had gotten all three right, I wouldn’t have learned anything.  Today I got to learn two new things.”
  4. Allow time for students to reflect on mistakes and successes so that reflection is a part of the learning process and not only as a consequence or punishment. Ask children to regularly name what they did that worked for them and what they will improve on next time.

Finally, we can’t teach what we don’t know.  Learning more about how anxiety impacts you and how to manage your own symptoms will better prepare you to recognize and respond to children’s behaviors as they occur in your class.  You can learn more about anxiety and how to manage it in our video courses at TeacherCoach.com.

Three Steps from the Assembly Line

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  • Lack of control over their work
  • The inability to be able to use their acquired skills
  • Low job security
  • High performance demands
  • Low pay
  • Limited decision making power
  • Lack of mental stimulation
  • Long hours
  • Poor work conditions

This is not a list of complaints from the teacher’s union, but a list of factors identified as contributing to stress and burnout among factory workers. As these stressors continue, workers become disengaged from their work, productivity drops and stress related injuries increase.

While attention in the field of industry turns to ways for increasing employee satisfaction and engagement, education seems to be marching closer to the assembly line. Teachers are being pressed to rely less and less on their own talents and passions in order to conform to prescribed academic standards and curricula. Measurements for teacher success seemingly have little to do with a teacher’s creativity or job satisfaction and do not take into account the impact of the larger education culture.

When teachers feel disconnected from their work, they become disconnected from their students.  Research shows that risk-protective factors such as self-esteem, determination, and  ‘grit’ in young people are fostered through relationships with caring adults, teachers and mentors. And yet, teachers’ well-being is often at best an after-thought to professional development, and more often dismissed entirely.

When teachers can bring their whole selves to work they can foster the kinds of relationships necessary for student well-being. Teachers who have a greater awareness of their own needs and abilities have a greater potential to be effective educators and role models to their students.

What can schools do to create a culture that values the importance of teacher engagement and satisfaction? Again, we might look to industry research that suggests that workplaces that incorporate wellness into the culture see greater productivity and satisfaction.

The following elements have been shown to be essential to creating a workplace that values the whole person. How far from your school to the factory floor?

Healthy and successful schools:

  • Embrace risk-taking
  • Allow for and celebrate mistakes as evidence of learning
  • Support healthy conflict
  • Set high expectations without demanding perfection
  • Offer a high level of nurturance
  • Focus more attention on process and environment instead of output

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Thinking Styles That Can Leave You Feeling Mad as a Hatter

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In honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday this week, we will draw our inspiration from a much-loved children’s book Alice in Wonderland.

Alice is chatting with the Mock Turtle and Gryphon when they ask her to tell them about her past.  So much has happened to poor Alice in the past 24 hours that she says to her friends:

 ‘It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.’

What a liberating notion, that what is possible today could be completely unexpected and different from all the adventures that came before it.  So often we become locked into patterns of relating to others based on our previous experiences. We’ve been hurt before so we protect ourselves through predictions and conclusions we draw based on yesterday’s stories. And we rarely take the time to check out whether our predictions are correct or if there might be another possible outcome.

CaptureHere are 10 common thinking styles that can lead to symptoms of depression and anxiety and a feeling of being ‘stuck’ in our relationships and personal lives:

  1. All or Nothing Thinking: This is sometimes called black and white thinking and leads to the belief that something is only ever right or wrong.
  2. Negative Filter: Giving weight only to negative information or information that supports our negative assumptions
  3. Jumping to Conclusions: Believing that we know what others are thinking (Mindreading) or that we know what will happen (Fortune Telling)
  4. Emotional Reasoning: Assigning incorrect meaning to feelings “I’m embarrassed so I must be stupid”
  5. Labeling: Assigning labels to others and to ourselves
  6. Over-Generalizing: “People are always selfish”, “Nothing ever works out for me”
  7. Minimizing the Positive: Making excuses that diminish your accomplishments
  8. Catastrophizing: Blowing things out of proportion and imagining the worst possible outcome
  9. “Shoulding”: Using critical words like ‘should’, ‘must’, and ‘ought’ about ourselves can leave us feeling guilty and as if we’ve already failed. Using them about others can leave us frustrated when they fail to meet our expectations.
  10. Personalization: Taking responsibility for things that are not completely your fault or blaming others for something for which you bear some responsibility.

If you’d like your own “Through the Looking Glass” experience, consider choosing one of these patterns you recognize in yourself and spend an entire day challenging yourself to both notice when you are using the pattern and trying to do it’s opposite. For example, what might happen if, for each time you notice something negative in the day, you seek out something you can also appreciate?

Who knows what you might uncover? As Alice says:

“I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a few times since then.”