Raising Capable Kids (Regardless of Their Label)

Does your child have a disability or have some label? If so, you need to listen to this interview with Dr. Deborah Winking, an educational psychologist and a special education teacher. She is the author of Capable: A Story of Triumph for Children the World Has Judges as “Different” and Raising Capable Kids. She is the mother of four, including one adopted child and one child with a neurological disorder.

In this episode, we cover:
Many of our kids have hidden disabilities caused by trauma. These disabilities can look like so many different things, including behavior problems.

You say these 12 habits are to change yourself, not your child. Why?

• Habit 1: Believe that effort creates ability
• Habit 3: Set a vision of capability with your child and adjust it over time
• Habit 6: Send capable messages: Use words and act in ways that let your child know that you think they are capable
• Habit 8: Challenge your child in ways that regularly take them (and you) outside your comfort zone.
• Habit 10: Allow your child to make choices and experience the consequences of those choices
• Habit 11: celebrate your child’s persistence to build a narrative of strength 

Order your copy of Raising Capable Kids & use code: Capable20 for a 20% discount and free shipping.

Transcript

Please pardon ay errors, this is an automated transcript.
Dawn Davenport  0:00  
This is Creating a Family. Talk about foster adoptive and kinship care. Welcome back to the regulars, we are so glad you have stuck with us and hold these long years, I should say, and to a special shout out of Welcome to our newbies. I'm Dawn Davenport. I am the host of this show, as well as a director of a nonprofit, creating a family.org. Today we're going to be talking about raising capable kids. Regardless of their level, we will be talking with Dr. Deborah Winking. She is an educational psychologist and a special education teacher, she is the author of capable a story of triumph for children, the world has judged as different. And her new book, raising capable kids, she is a mother of four, including one child with a neurological disorder. Well, Deborah, many of our children that our parents are raising, have a and I will use air quotes around the word hidden hidden disability, it's caused by trauma. And you would look at these kids and not be able to see on the surface that there is a problem. But their disability can look like so many different things, including behavior problems. So this topic of raising capable kids, regardless of their label, is particularly relevant to our audience. So I'd like to begin if we can, if you could read from page 16, from the book raising capable kids, that gives the underpinning for the premise of the book. Sure,

Speaker 1  1:32  
Dawn, thanks a lot. I'm so happy to be here. i In addition to the child you talked about, I'm also an adoptive mother myself. So I am thrilled to be here. All right, here goes. What I have learned from analyzing parent and child experiences across a rich cadre of Everyday Stories of ordinary lives has become the driving premise of this book. That is all children who have somehow been labeled by our psychological, educational, and medical diagnostic communities are unique individuals. If we were to lay each child's particular combination of strengths and challenges, end to end, the list would span a rainbow. No matter the breadth and depth of differences. There is a single set of mindsets and habits shared by those parents who are raising their children to be capable, whatever capable looks like for them. Something

Dawn Davenport  2:31  
else you talk about, before we get into you outline and you lay out 12 habits, we will not hit all 12 We will hit the high points today. But before we get into the 12 habits you talk about these habits are not to change the child, they are to change the parent, and what to do to explain more about that.

Speaker 1  2:54  
Yeah, for sure. The truth is, is all of our children, as much as we like to think they are an extension of us, they are autonomous beings. And this book is not for you. If your goal is to change your child, this book is for you. If you want to change how you show up in the world with your child, in order to improve your relationship with your child. The fact is, by intentionally changing how we show up with our kid every day, we change that relationship ever so slightly, which awesome byproduct results in a change in our child over time, and, frankly, makes parenting just just plain more fun. So I give you a simple example. And we're gonna get specific, we're gonna get down and dirty with some of the habits a little bit. But here's a simple example. When we take on the habits and really make them our own, when we are not acting out of our fears, when our amygdala is not on fire due to our nervous system being out of whack about how we might be rejected. Because our child has had a meltdown or how our child might be judged and rejected by a friend, we naturally relax. And as we relax, our child relaxes, and maybe he doesn't have that meltdown, or instead, he has that meltdown, but recovers more quickly. That is a simple example of how changing how we show up in the end over time changes our child.

Dawn Davenport  4:29  
Yes. Well, let's jump in and start with Habit number one, and that is believe that effort creates ability. Right. Talk to us about that habit. Yeah.

Speaker 1  4:40  
So that is kind of the engine for all the habits. Typically in our own lives. If we're asking, you know, how do we get where we got, we will say, we will say Oh, we got there because of our effort or because of our hard work or because we really tried and we often in my interviews with literally hundreds of hours of it. Interviews with parents across socio economic status, race, and disability and labeled type of their children. Those parents would say, hey, yeah, I got there because I worked hard, or I worked hard, and I had some good breaks, but I really stuck in there and, and persevered. And I made myself into what I am. And they often say that when asked about their children that they consider neurotypical, but when I talk to them about their child, who has some kind of label somehow has been sorted by the system and put in the bin labeled less than it's the formality and finality of that diagnosis that makes them question that same equation of effort creates potential effort creates ability that they believe for themselves, the diagnosis in and of itself, kind of shortcuts that and they say, Oh, well, you know, I can't really expect Jamal to do the whole page of math problems, because you know, he has blank, or, you know, I can't expect Sharise to make any friends because she has blank. And because of that, suddenly, that equation that we take for granted, that is effort equals ability breaks down for our kids. And so what we talk about is how we need to believe at our core, that our efforts and the efforts of our child will result in increased potential on their part. And so that's kind of the basic of habit one. But I do want to also say about it, that in this case, the bedrock is that potential is not fixed, and effort can trump whatever diagnostic predictions are out there, effort may look different, and require additional supports or scaffolds for our kids who have been labeled. But that belief needs to guide all decisions you make with and on behalf of your child. So if we believe our child can't we make one set of decisions, which leads to one set of opportunities, and if we believe our child, can, we make a different set of decisions, which leads to a whole different set of opportunities? This is key.

Dawn Davenport  7:22  
Let me pause here to briefly ask a favor of you. We need your ratings and reviews for this podcast, it really helps us get the message out because it's your star ratings and your reviews that are what the podcast apps used to push podcasts. And we want to be pushed, because we want to get into more ears. So whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast, if you go to the show notes, in the show notes, there is a place for you to give a star rating. So please do if you have the extra time, please write something we truly, truly, truly appreciate it. And we read them. In fact, at our all staff meeting, we read whatever new comments we get in it is motivational to our staff. It's motivational to me and it helps us as an organization, as a nonprofit, get our message and our mission out. Thank you so much. And now back to this interview. All right, and that's a great lead into Habit number three, which is to set a vision of capable with your child. And I love this part, and adjusted over time. So there's a couple of things I want to talk about about habit three. One is the part about setting a vision of capable with your child. And then the second part of that that I want to talk about is an adjusted over time. So let's start with the first setting a vision of capable with your child. Well, first

Speaker 1  8:49  
of all, I want to point out that when I talk about vision, it's not some crystal ball gazing image that comes to you. The vision is a shared belief about your child's future, which is informed and shaped by their interests, their motivations, their passions, as well as your hopes for them. So this is really important, because I work with a lot of folks also in the autism community. And there is a big push right now, which is nothing for us without us. In other words, everything needs to be determined by the child. And I push back on that in the book, not that the child's interests, motivations and passions should not be center, the center, but also that we do not abdicate our parental responsibility in order to make sure our child's interests, motivations and passions are in the forefront. Another words, there are some things we know. And there are a lot of examples in the book where I talk about that. Because when we talk about the vision, it is kind of saying hey, what do we imagine our child could be doing that poor wills from habit two, which we're not going to talk about today, which is leaning in to our child's natural curiosities, interests and passions, we need to listen first. And then we also need to combine that with understanding what we know, I have a great example that I'd like to share of a kid who wanted to have nothing to do with his bike, he had no interest in getting on any kind of two wheeled contraption. Absolutely not, he definitely enjoyed the comfort of the ride in his dad's car, and listening to tunes in his sister's old beater. That's how he wanted to get where he wanted to get. So he got to 1516. And his dad recognize, hey, that's wonderful. But I won't always be around to transport my child everywhere. And he knew because of some particular cognitive difficulties that his son had, that driving might not or was not going to be a viable option for him. So he made sure was intentional about setting a vision that his child would navigate their close knit community, their town, on his bike had to do a lot of work over time. First, on bikes, as a big boy, this kid was 15, or 16, with bikes with no pedals, then bikes with three wheels, then finally letting go and being on the bike. And over time, what happened was, that boy did learn to be very independent in his own community. I interviewed that boy, as an adult 2324. And he said, wow, you know, what, if it wasn't for my dad, I'd probably still be sitting at home bored. So I want to emphasize, interests, passions, motivations of your child are in the forefront, but they are also very much informed by what you know, and have seen in your own child. Does that make sense?

Dawn Davenport  12:04  
Yeah, it does make sense, you're working with your child. But the thing is that you're wanting also to encourage them to think beyond the hair and the now to also believe in their capability, and letting their interests guide you. But nonetheless, setting them the second part of that I want to talk about and adjusted over time, because as time goes on, we all learn more or number and our kids change. But we also learn more about their abilities. And that should inform what our earlier visions are. Let's talk a little about that second section of justed overtime,

Speaker 1  12:38  
yes, yeah, you know, we can only see what we can see in our child in the moment. So I talk about how I was able to do it with my child and how I saw it in those families that I researched. And that is being able to hold sacred two ideas at the same time, imagining the possible while being honest about the present. So in fact, things might not look so good in a moment. But while being honest about where our kid is right now, we have to be able to imagine what's possible. And then we do that by being able to see sparks of interest, sparks of possibility in your child, even if they're far right now far from where they could be. Otherwise, we would never move off of square one. And so when I talk about it, we talk about being able to do both of those things. For example, this was one kid in one of our interviewed families, making his creative and loves imaginative play, but other kids avoid playing with him because he just can't get his thoughts out quickly, and often repeats what other kids have said, which makes kids make fun of him. That is what now looks like. But imagining what could be. He's imaginative. I've seen that imagination. Someday he'll be a regular member of an online Dungeons and Dragons group. That parent had seen that interest, that scene, that excitement around all things creative, all things fantasy. And so it's holding those to constant as your child grows and changes so that that vision morphs as it's aligned with the changes you see in your child over time. You know, you're not parent in denial. Wow. You know, this is where we are right now. But this is possible. Does

Dawn Davenport  14:24  
that make sense? No, absolutely. Keeping on the capable theme, which is, of course, the underlying theme of the whole book. Let's talk about Habit number six, which is send capable messages, use words and acts in ways that let your child know that you think they are capable. Boy, I think this is powerful. And I think it is powerful because when we have a kid with a diagnosis, it is easy to fall prey to the diagnosis, to let the diagnosis control what we imagine what we think, for this child and even if we think we are hiding that from our children. Oftentimes we're not, because our words that are x bilious. So anyway, let's talk some about HABIT NUMBER SIX about sending capable messages.

Speaker 1  15:11  
I love what you said, because the diagnosis can take over. And what I always say is that diagnosis can become, you know, can become an effort killer, because if we buy into every indication and every characteristic of a child's diagnosis, we wouldn't get off the dime. And that is why the idea is that the diagnosis is only only as useful as it is for getting the services supports, scaffolds, and opportunities that you need for your child use the heck out of it yet, but when it begins to change how you think or act about your child's potential about what your child can achieve, it has outlived its usefulness and shouldn't be discarded. I couldn't

Dawn Davenport  15:56  
agree with you more diagnosis have a place and you've summarized it beautifully. There are places to get services in place to get teachers and also sometimes to change attitudes, you know, and so all of those, it can be useful. It also helps parents get a support. But a diagnosis can take on a life of its own and become so limiting if we are not careful as parents. Absolutely.

Speaker 1  16:17  
I have a friend in real estate and she would always say, you know what the real estate game is about location, location, location. And I like to say the diagnosis game is about information, information, information, use that information, but don't allow it to change you now, on to capable messages. If habit one is sort of the undergirding that first habit we talked about that effort creates ability. But that is sort of our undergirding and guiding principle that we need to hold sacred. Habit six is the fuel, because how we use words, and how we act and what we say and what we don't say, matters infinitesimally over the course of a childhood. Now, I always say to people, and by the way, this I usually preface every podcast I do is this, the habits are not about making parents feel bad or feeling indictment over what they haven't done. These habits. This key set of habits is about having us as parents celebrate, and supercharge as on the areas where we are being intentional. And get us to think more intentionally about those areas where maybe we haven't thought as much. So this isn't about saying what we've done wrong or right. But it's about focusing our intentionality. So when I talk about messages, hey, we all make mistakes, we've all said the wrong thing, not said the wrong thing, or done the wrong thing. We don't want to vilify ourselves, or kind of get ourselves into a state of paralysis over this one time, not a problem two times, five times. But what does become the problem is the way we use words and act over time, that send our child the message, either that they're capable, and can take on whatever the world throws their way, or that they're disabled or somehow wrong.

Dawn Davenport  18:21  
Can you give us some examples of words and acts that show capability and then contrast them with words and acts that send the message that our child is less than capable?

Speaker 1  18:34  
Yep. It's a lot in what we do, and how we spend our time. So I'll talk about a parent in the book, who, you know, really wanted her child to experience Hawaii and wanted him to be able to get on that surfboard, the kid didn't want to get near the water. And what she did was she got the wetsuit, she walked on the side of the ocean parallel to the shore, with him, holding the surfboard, just walking together with it then got to the place where they got on that surfboard, then got to the place, finally over time, where it was pushing in with the waves, but throughout that, even though it took time and a lot of scaffolding, the message her son got through what she did, how she spent her time and how she has better money is, hey, the person who's most influential in my life believes I can't or they wouldn't spend all their time doing this with me if they didn't think I could, they wouldn't even take me outside the house. Right? So that's doing. The other thing is they had set up and this is why I highlight this particular family, they had set up a signal when their child was getting overwhelmed what they would do, and it was a hand signal that they used. And when they made that hand signal, it's timeout, we need to take a break, but we're gonna go back to it so many times. During that learning to surf. There was a Wait, we're taking a timeout, because there was overwhelm, there was fear. And we don't want kids with trauma to feel more overwhelmed, or more fear, we don't want to play into that trauma. But the message that came from that signal that they had developed together was, hey, we're gonna take a timeout, we're not going to look at that sort of forward for a while, but you better sure believe we're going to get back on it. Because I believe you can. It's not like we're going to quit forever. We're never going to go back to that. It's, you can do this. But I respect you. We're stepping back. And then we're stepping back in. Does that make sense? Now, some of the negatives, I'll use myself, my son's particularly sibility, neurological disorder, and he had a twin. And at school, they were doing something called the passion project, where it was something they were really excited about. And they were going to spend time working on their passion project. And guess what, at that time, he was very, very negative, very combative, towards anything that had to do with school, he did not want anything that showed him up to be incompetent, he just backed off from it immediately. So he was very negative towards school. So to avoid, I'm thinking, I'm doing the right thing. I don't want to put any pressure on him. I talked to his sister all the time about her passion project, all about how she was going to start a girl's soccer team and the sixth, seventh and eighth grade. And that was her passion and why and why not? That was so important. And guess what I didn't do? Talk to my son about what might be a passion project for him. Right. So what message did he get? Wow, I must be so behind. So undeserving so. So I'm passionate. Yeah, without passion, but also, also what I want doesn't matter so much. So I'm so behind the eight ball that we can't even talk about passions with me. She's not even bringing it up. So they're in? This is where I talk with parents a lot about, they'll say, oh, yeah, no, I always tell them, they can do it. I always send positive messages. But we often don't look at the messages we send with what we don't say. So there's a perfect example. I thought, in full honesty at the moment, wow, I just don't want to stress about anymore with more talk about more homework. But what I was doing was really sending a message that he wasn't in the same league couldn't do it and wasn't capable.

Dawn Davenport  22:31  
I can see that and your intentions were good. But yeah, as I say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Absolutely.

Speaker 1  22:39  
100%. And that, and that is true. And that's why I think that habits are so important. And I'm excited for your listeners to take a look. Because they help us go from kind of being scattershot, you know, sort of doing whatever tip or trick comes to mind that day, or whatever we saw on our quick flip to our computer screen or through Instagram, or Tiktok, to what are habits that I can be intentional about not intentional in the way you said but really careful about. And when I talk about habits, something that we do over and over again, so much so that it becomes just the way we show up for our kids. And that's what's going to change results over time.

Dawn Davenport  23:23  
Let me take a quick moment to thank the jockey Bing Family Foundation for supporting both this podcast, but also supporting our 12 free online education courses. These courses are terrific. They are one hour, if you're a foster parent, you can use them for your foster parent in service training. But even if you don't need them, you ought to check them out. The topics are so relevant to parenting kids who have been adopted, our fostering kids are kinship kids. So make certain that you check it out. You can find it at Bitly slash J VF support that's bi T dot L y slash J B F support. Now I'll get you back to the interview. Okay, let's move on to Habit number eight, which I think is an important one. And that is to challenge your child in ways that regularly take them and you outside your comfort zone. And I think this is important for kids with disabilities in particular, I think that we as parents are afraid we are afraid that they could get hurt, we are afraid that they will be embarrassed, we're afraid probably that we will be embarrassed or that our child will act out or our child will do something. And so we often don't allow that put them in situations that will be challenging as a way to protect them or that is what we're telling ourselves and probably is our intent. So why is that not a good idea?

Speaker 1  24:51  
So it was sent to me by my son's physical therapist and I never forgot it. particularly smart physical therapist when He was very smart. She said, You need to challenge Jack every day slightly beyond where he currently is, or he will atrophy and will not become all he can be. The fact is, and we know this, from looking at a little sprout coming out of the ground from looking at the patterns of how salmon migrate to video games that our kids are so enthralled in that every time we see change, it's because of some type, discomfort, some type of challenge, the little chute has to work hard to poke out of the ground, because there's big trees all around him, that changes in temperature, make the salmon have to do a different migration path, because of challenge are video games. They know those algorithms No, challenge the child just slightly above where they are not too far, or we give up and walk away, not too low, or we get bored. So it is a challenge that causes change. Now, I want to be very clear here, particularly with your listeners, because a lot of our kids come from real trauma, we are not talking about adversity or challenge that is held constant over time. In other words, we're not talking about putting our child in a difficult situation and leaving them there. We're talking about controlled challenge that allows them to grow. Does that make sense? Give

Dawn Davenport  26:31  
us an example from the book where a child was challenged a little bit on each day or give us an example about your son Jack.

Speaker 1  26:37  
Yeah, for sure. So it is knowing where your child is at and saying, Hey, I know they can do this. And they may, you know, scuffle a little say this is hard, they may even push back a little. But what we need to do is if we know they can do it, we need to put the supports in place around that in education to process we call productive struggle. productive struggle is the process of effortful learning that we engaged in, that we engage in when we're faced with problems that we don't immediately know how to solve. So I can offer so many great examples. Give your child a challenge where everything isn't given to them, right. So here's an example. I work with kids of all levels, resilient kids who are going to college and kids who have very severe disabilities. But for example, if we are constantly lifting both of our child's legs, and putting them on their wheelchair pads, you know what, they're not encountering any challenge that would create new neural pathways that would get them to position their feet on those wheelchair pads. If you have a task you want your kid to do in the yard or outside, they, hey, you know what we've got this problem in that the dog keeps getting out, I wonder how we could solve that don't give them everything leaves them information out. And in leaving out the information, they have to work a little harder to solve that problem. Just as the child with a physical disability has to work a little harder to get those feet positioned on his wheelchair pads when we don't do it for them. So what happens there, and I don't want to get too nerdy about the neuroscience, but it is important. What's happened is when we try something new, that's a cow path in our brain. But when we do it over and over again, it becomes a superhighway. So by having our kids repeat things that are a little difficult, that require them to step out. If they only do what they're good at this, get home, sit down, get on their computer every day doing the same routine, they are not challenging themselves to create new neural pathways, right. So that step out which kind of feels kind of icky, maybe feels like a scratchy sweater to start with is the beginning of creating those new neural pathways. Does

Dawn Davenport  29:02  
that make sense to Yeah, it does. Let's move on to Habit number 10. Allow your child to make choices and experience the consequence of those choices. This is such

Speaker 1  29:15  
an important one. And for whatever reason, we have less trouble holding our kids that are considered neurotypical whatever that means today to the consequences of their actions than we do our kids who have any type of neuro divergence. And that is just true. Whether it be through our own personal guilt, oh, they have such a hard life. Oh, if I make them get off their computer, now they're just going to have a complete tantrum meltdown. And that's going to set the entire house off. And I'm thinking about the entire family system. So I'm just not. I'm not going to take this one on right. How many times have we held our child who identifies as neurotypical a accountable, and let our child who has any kind of disability or challenge off the hook, we are doing them no favors. I talk with families all the time, kids can understand different consequences within their family, they cannot understand no consequences. I talk with families I work with to make sure that they don't cut that choice making consequence, feeling cycle short for their kid who's neurodivergent example. When I make a decision, and I say, Ah, I'm going to wear these high heels to school, and I get there, and boy, it's field trip day. And by the end of the day, I've got blisters on all parts of my feet. When I make that decision, guess what, there's a process that happens in my brain, I feel the result of my own choice, I picked it. And next time, maybe I choose a different shoe. If my parents do all that choosing for me, they still may feel bad about it. But I don't see my agency in it. To the extent that that is an identifier of what it means to lead a fully human life. Full agency requires us to make choices and experience the consequences of those choices, to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and move on. And there is an example in the book that I will share of a young man who was so smart, very, very creative. And he wanted to do animation. In his a during COVID times, this boy, I happened to be his teacher. And during COVID, when he didn't want to get online for class, his parents kind of let him not get online, they they didn't take it on. And when he didn't get in the car and time to head to school when it was in person school days, that didn't make him go to school. They just weren't taking that on he was a smart kid, he knew more than anybody. They didn't take on those little choices that he was making, and the natural consequences that would result because of the IEP held, he was protected from the consequences that you would normally receive from not going to school. So then it became time for him to transition. And he had some help looking for job experiences. So first, they were mock interviews. And then there were job shadows that he was signed up for in the area of working first and a low level. But in the area of animation. Well, when those mock interviewers would log on, and he didn't log on in time, they hung up, when he didn't show up for the first one or two job shadows on time they dried up. And what their family was experiencing was the pain of consequences deferred. So we really need to make sure we don't unfairly rob our children with a diagnosis or with the challenge of making their own decisions and feeling the consequences of those.

Dawn Davenport  33:04  
I think that one of the problems is that so often we don't start young with this. And so all of a sudden, it's the consequences are big, you know, they're teenagers, and allowing the consequences can be life altering. And that's frightening, and it's scary. But the problem if we go back is that we haven't started when they were five, when they were six, 810, whatever. Why are parents reluctant to allow the natural consequences for our children to experience the natural consequences of their action?

Speaker 1  33:37  
I think there's a lot going on there. But one of the things is we ourselves, we sometimes fall prey to feeling sorry for our child. And that is misplaced sorrow, because the best way to have our kid show up as capable is to not feel sorry for them. It's Oh, you know, he has such a tough time at school so hard for him, I can't ask him to get off the iPad, when he gets home. It's feeling sorry for our child. It's some kind of guilt. It's also sometimes it's just plain exhaustion. You know, I know if we hold our child to this consequence, or hold our child to the decisions they've made. It's gonna hurt. I always say small child small problems, big child big problems. And so, yes, we know that with our grown kids. So I do a lot of examples in the book. And by the way, there are a lot of really important and well done research based discipline systems out there that really talk a lot about consequences. And I think something that's important, the natural consequence is the most important and the most impactful, but I do a lot of work in the book, looking at little kids around our tone how we speak. For example, if we say, you know, I noticed that you're having trouble getting your homework done, and I noticed your teacher It has given you a bad score in math because you haven't been doing your homework. So what I'm gonna do, and I know you want to do well, so I'm going to hold on to your Furby, you show me a perfect place to put it until you have your homework done. That intention, the intentionality and the motivation of the parent is very clear. There's very compassionate, as opposed to, you know what, you're bringing home these bad grades, I'm taking that Furby and put it up on the high shelf, right? Kids can tell that difference. And the point is, yes, use the natural consequences whenever you can. But if the child doesn't care, for example, I don't care if I've got an F doesn't matter to me. But I do care that I'm holding on to my Furby, we can compassionately say, I can see that the Furby is getting in the way of getting that row of math done. Where can we put the Furby until that rose done. And then we play with the Furby for a while, and then we put it back in its garage or safe place, you see how there, you're teaching a young child to be able to make choices and accept consequences in ways that are going to help them long term, so that we're not dealing with the kind of situation when you have a entire childhood of consequences deferred,

Dawn Davenport  36:20  
right. And then when the consequence is such a harsh one, it's reality. But then we as parents become fearful, we think, Oh, this is too big, this could be too hard.

Speaker 1  36:32  
And I get in the way of it. So now we'll try to get them off of that ticket, or try to get out of that, or pay for that, or pay that they didn't pay their car insurance. And we don't want to be there with any of our kids. So I 100% agree. And I encourage people to look at that place in the book where we talk about how we pose choices to kids, hey, you can ride on the sidewalk, or you can hold your scooter near me. But you can't ride it up on the edge where the old people are, you know, so that way you've given them a choice, they have a choice. And it has to be a choice that's acceptable to you. All right.

Dawn Davenport  37:08  
Did you know that we have a podcast where we answer your questions drops every week on the weekend? It's called weekend wisdom. And we need your questions. So please, if you've got a question that's relevant to adoption, fostering our kinship care, please send it to us at info at creating a family.org that's inf o at creating a family.org. And now back to the show. Now let's talk about celebrating your child's persistence to build a narrative of strength. This is habit 11. And I've selected this habit, because I think persistence is so underrated. And I think it is such an important trait. I don't know if all children naturally have it. But I know that we can encourage it in all kids.

Speaker 1  38:00  
And remember, my focus is not on whether the kid starts out with it naturally hasn't. It's how we parents can show up to help grow it right,

Dawn Davenport  38:10  
we can definitely help grow it. That's exactly right. Right. And so the point is, how

Speaker 1  38:14  
do we show up? How do we as parents, not leave anything on the table to help our kids understanding that our kids gonna go through some pain. So I know that probably many of your listeners have children who might have ADHD or ADD. So I'm sure you've heard this statistic, but it's a useful one here. Experts estimate that by age 10, kids experiencing ADHD receive 20,000 more negative comments than they have positive ones. So what happens and how our brains work and I talk about this little in the neuroscience is there's this tally in our brains of loss or when you know, I did that right? Or I didn't, I got bad feedback, or I got good feedback. And that tally over time for our kids with diagnosis, often tips way to the negative, as opposed to the positive. So they've heard so many negative comments and actually, I would like to under habit 11 just read you this paragraph that is almost it's cringe worthy to listen to and it's what our kids can experience on any given day. The tally. This is in his my son's words, how the tally stacks up for him when I spoke and the kid next to me predictably rolls her eyes because she doesn't like how I look loss when kids talk over me as if I'm not there because there are too many arms in my delivery loss. When everyone finishes the math work and gets to go to free time with me still sitting there loss when classmates walk away as I'm telling a story because it was taking too long for me to get to the punch line loss. When the PE teacher tells the class to run around the track and I'm trading Link dead last loss when I with the ball and kick the air during the kickball team, whilst everyone else watches loss, when the point I make in class repeats what another kid has just said, because of the extra time it takes me to process my thoughts. And a couple of kids snicker loss, one girl reading my paper so she can't read it. Because my handwriting is too babyish loss. It's that kind of mentality that our kids are feeling sometimes, if that feels bad to you, just think of how it feels to the child who experiences that on a day to day basis. So what we can do is, instead of reinforcing right or wrong, reinforce effort, like crazy. So then the experience that we have can be logged in, and we begin to build our own personal narrative. So in fact, research shows by about age 12, or 13, depending on our kids cognitive functioning, we begin to build a narrative tell ourselves a story about our own lives. And if we as parents can point out, wow, you know, I really liked how you brought up a unique idea that nobody else had. I really like how you waited for the kid who was last. I really like how you didn't laugh, when the other kids were laughing? Hey, I noticed that you take time and let other people respond, instead of talking over people. Hey, I noticed that you worked all night on this, to get an answer. I think that's great. I think that makes you the kind of kid that's going to be successful long term. So with those kinds of reinforcements over time, our child builds a narrative of persistence. I'm a good kid, I'm a careful kid. I'm a persistent kid. I'm a kid that works until the job's done, even if they're not even near that first kid to be done, or the kid with the right answer, or the kid with the best answer. So that's how we build that notion within our kids as they write their own story.

Dawn Davenport  42:17  
And what you said was, praise the effort, not the outcome. And I think that's how we build persistence, is that we tell them that I am so impressed, you'd had to do this three times to get it, but you did it three times. That's what helps you succeed. And you say that to your neurodiverse, but also to your children who are neurotypical. Right.

Speaker 1  42:40  
And, you know, this is something that I think is really important. I've had readers say, you know, look, the habits are good ways to be with our kids, regardless of whether they're neurodiverse, or neurotypical. And that is true. But this book is specifically designed for those kids who have been sorted as less than because of how they think, move, communicate or behave. Because as bad as it is for our neurotypical kids, there's a special Isay ring is like Dante's inferno of difficulty and fear for parents who are parenting a child, who had been told by either the educational, psychiatric or medical community that their child does not measure up. So certainly, the habits apply, but the examples and the ways of being and the ways of doing of making the habits your own, I've crafted them with examples of kids who are not neurotypical because parenting is tough every day. But it's that much more tough when your child has been told that they're just not good enough.

Dawn Davenport  43:47  
Thank you, Dr. Deborah, winking for being with us today to talk about raising capable kids, regardless of their label. You had mentioned at the beginning that the publisher was offering 20% off on the book raising capable kids, how would our audience get that discount? The code

Speaker 1  44:06  
is book 20. And you'd go to the jkp, website jkp.com. I'm assuming you have shownotes. Yes. So what we'll do is we'll make sure that all the ways to get raising capable kids and my previous book, which sets the stage are in the show notes, but you can get it Barnes and Noble, you can get it at Amazon,

Dawn Davenport  44:29  
we'd like you to go to your local bookseller. However,

Speaker 1  44:32  
independent booksellers. And also I know the publisher is trying to getting as many libraries as they can because, you know, not everybody has the money to buy a book. But for our listeners today, at jkp, which will be in the show notes. There'll be 20% off and free shipping as well. Okay,

Dawn Davenport  44:50  
thank you so much for being with us today. We all need to think, especially with our children about how we raise them to be capable, raising kids verbal kids but ultimately capable adults thank you so much you