Lesson Two: Building Parenting Skills
Introduction
As we learned in lesson one, magnifying is making something appear bigger than it is. In this
lesson, we look closer at enhancing parenting skills. This lesson will build upon and strengthen your parenting
skills by looking closer at the current development of your teens, building
connections, and supporting emotional resilience.
What will you learn from this lesson?
This lesson will cover the following
topics and goals:
Topic: Goal:
|
Adolescent
Development |
Understand how to support teens by understanding their
development |
|
Daily Conversations |
Understand the impact of high quality and daily
conversations to build connection |
|
Emotions Coaching |
Understand how emotional coaching helps to build
emotional resilience |
_____________________________________________________________________
Lesson Two: Building Parenting Skills
Lesson number two starts with understanding adolescent development. Parents who have accurate information about their child’s development can form appropriate expectations regarding the child’s behavior. This makes it easier for parents to understand how to support appropriate development and see their children in a more positive light (Coffiels & Srinivasavaradan, 2021). Our goal is to help parents understand their adolescent's development, how to build stronger connections, and how to support emotional resilience.
What do I need to know about adolescent development?
Erik Erickson had 8 stages Erik Erickson had 8 stages of development. Each stage involves a person
experiencing a psychosocial crisis. As a person successfully navigates each
stage the result is a healthy personality. Stage 1 through 5 focus on child
development:
· Stage 1: Infancy (0-1
year) The child will navigate trust vs. mistrust.
· Stage 2: Early
Childhood (1-3 years) The child will navigate autonomy vs. shame/doubt
· Stage 3: Play Age
(3-6 years) The child will navigate initiative vs. guilt
· Stage 4: School Age
(7-12 years) The child will navigate industry vs. inferiority
· Stage 5: Adolescence
(13-19 years) The child will navigate identity vs. role confusion
For
this lesson we will be focusing on Stage 5: Adolescence. During stage 5
adolescents are searching for a sense of self and their personal identity. This
involves navigating the many changes that are taking place.
What
are the many changes that are taking place?
We will
focus on these four areas of development:
Physical Development:
The physical changes that take place are drastic, and it is important
that as parents we let our teens know that the changes, they are experiencing
are normal. Adolescents go through puberty, this includes hair growth
throughout their bodies, an increase in body odor, acne begins to form, and sex
organs change. Weight and height also increase exponentially. Adolescents can
gain between 20-25 lbs. in one year! Girls start their growth spurt around 11
years, peaking around 12 years, and then are finished around 15 years. Boys
start their growth spurt later around 13 years, peaking at 14 years and then
are finished around 17 years (Higgins, 2014).
Social Development:
During the stage of social development is when adolescents focus on building
connections outside of their family. These new connections help the adolescent
establish an identity and distinct roles outside of their family as they expand
not only their social circle but also their social roles. Adolescents also
begin to desire to form romantic relationships. Social development at this
stage can be impacted by the adolescent’s environment. This is a crucial time
when caring parents and adults can offer support and provide opportunities for
adolescents to engage in a variety of social activities.
Emotional Development:
Healthy emotional development manifests gradually within an adolescent’s
ability to assess their feelings and the feelings of others. Self-esteem is
affected at this stage; their self-esteem will depend on how they perceive
themselves, their abilities, and their life experiences. During this stage
adolescents also experience a wide variety of environments and experiences that
create a wide range of stressors. Learning to regulate emotions is an important
task that adolescents undertake. Emotional competency is important for the
development and maintenance of healthy relationships, coping abilities, and
overall health and well-being in adolescents (Green et al., 2021).
Cognitive Development:
Why is understanding adolescent development important?
Understanding
adolescent development gives parents the knowledge to support their adolescents
during these stages. Research has
shown that parental sensitivity and support are critical for healthy adolescent
development. When adolescents feel, they can talk to their parents about their
problems, research
has found that this connectedness is associated with healthy behaviors and
emotions. As parents understand their adolescent’s behavior, they support their
teens in building emotional resilience (Mesman et al., 2021).
(image from https://isessay.com/reflective-writing-service/)
Now that we
have learned about the adolescents’ physical, social, emotional, and cognitive
development of adolescents, we have the knowledge needed to support our
children. Next, we will build parenting
skills by magnifying the daily conversations we have and exploring how we can
build emotional resilience through emotional coaching.
_____________________________________________________
Daily Conversations
How do we use conversation to connect?
How many times have you told your teen you love them today? This week?
This month? If it has been a while, it may be time to understand how important
expressing our love and affection is to them, as well as the impact that
positive communication can have on our adolescents. We will learn more about
positive praise in the coming lessons, but for now, we understand the ratio of
praise to criticism is 5 to 1: five compliments or praise to every negative or
critical comment (Zenger, 2013). Regular check-ins throughout the day also
build moments of connection with our teens.
Studies show that families who have positive parent-child communication
are closer, do better academically, and are better at solving problems (Wang et
al., 2022). You see how communication is another part of the factors that build
resilient families. Positive correlations have also been seen between family
communication, life quality, and autonomy (Bi & Wang, 2021).
What are Love Languages?
Effective communication is about speaking the same
language or at least understanding the language being spoken. There are many
languages and ways to speak. As we look at the language of love, we see that
people have unique needs and personalities. Teenagers start to understand
things they like and do not like, as well as what strengthens them in making
connections. Teens start to learn about connection and communication early. The
attachment theory tells us that the early years of a child’s life with their
caregivers are foundational to a child’s socioemotional development and
relationships in life (Delgado et al., 2022).
Many parents remember the snuggly moments of their
child’s youth, especially when their now growing teenager’s actions and words
seem to be distant and detached. Research shows the variables of connected
relationships like communication, support, intimacy, trust, and the quality of
parental relationships are predictive of the quality of the other relationships
children will have (Delgado, et al., 2021). As we learned previously in the
stages of development, it is normal for teens to seek independence and want
autonomy. We will learn about another way to communicate that is important to
building teen resilience as we take a closer look at the languages of love from
Dr. Gary Chapman. See if you can start to recognize the ways you and your child
feel and express love.
(image from https://isessay.com/reflective-writing-service/)
Follow the steps below to learn more. If you already know
your love language, skip to step 4.
Step 1) Please visit here and watch the short video on the home page.
Step 2) Take a minute to explore the types of love languages below the video.
Step 3) After you watch and explore, take the quick quiz here. After you take the quiz,
you can send your partner the results and start having conversations.
Step 4) Did you find your results interesting? In what
ways do you think your teen feels loved and gives love? Have your teen take the
quiz. (https://5lovelanguages.com/learn)
As a parent starts to understand ways of showing love to meet a child’s needs, communicating on their level of love becomes easier and strengthens positive interactions and relationships.
Reviewing the Parenting Pyramid
Looking back on what you learned from the parenting
pyramid by The Arbinger Institute, consider the first three levels. You may remember we
learned that in times of trouble, focus less on correction and teaching and
more on building relationships. As you focus on building relationships with
your spouse, you will become partners for your teen. We have been focusing during
this lesson on building the first three levels of relationships as you put into
practice your skills of communication, love, and building emotional
intelligence.
[Image Accessed: https://content.byui.edu/file/91e7c911-20c5-4b9f-b8fc-9e4b1b37b6fc/1/Parenting_Pyramid_article.pdf]
________________________________
Emotion Coaching
What is Emotion Coaching?
You may have spent some time watching your child’s sport teams over the
years. Listen as Julie shares more about her experiences with her kids’ coaches
to help you understand more about emotion-coaching.
5 Steps to Emotion-Coaching
Dr. John Gottman helps parents learn about emotional parenting styles before
they learn to build emotional resilience through Emotion-Coaching. Below is a
picture showing the emotional response styles from a Helping Families Thrive
post. They have displayed four main styles: dismissive, disapproving,
laissez-faire, and emotion-coaching. Some side effects of dismissive,
disapproving, and laissez-faire are a lack of emotional regulation, difficulty
regulating emotions, and a lack of trust in emotional responses (Gottman, 2015).
(Accessed from Instagram October 28, 2023)
During the many years of research, Dr. Gottman noticed some positive effects
of emotion- coaching including a “high vagal tone” in emotion-coached children
(Gottman). The vagus nerve is important to the process of regulation of the
involuntary functions of the nervous system. When a child can calm the
autonomic responses of strong emotions like anger or fear through regulating
emotional responses, they learn to “come home” and regulate the involuntary
parts of the nervous system (Gottman). Other positive outcomes for children are
the ability to trust how they feel, emotionally regulate, and problem solve.
5 Steps of Emotion-Coaching:
1) Be aware of the child’s emotions
2) Recognize emotion as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching
3) Listen empathetically and validate feelings
4) Help child verbally label emotions
5) Setting limits while helping the child problem-solve
This short clip will help you understand more about how to use the steps
of emotion-coaching.
Explaining the steps of emotion-coaching (link)
Read this cartoon carefully to see an example of emotion-coaching at
work.
(Image accessed YouTube
“Emotion Coaching”)
How
can you use the steps of emotion-coaching to guide your teen through an
emotional experience this week?
__________________________________
Conclusion:
As you
learned about the four different areas of adolescent development: physical,
social, emotional, and cognitive, we hope you gained a greater understanding of
how to better support and understand your adolescent. This lesson also
discussed connecting with our teens through conversation, love languages and
how they apply the parenting pyramid when building those connections.
Magnifying
our adolescent’s resilience begins with emotion-coaching. We learned what
emotion-coaching was from Julie sharing her experiences, the four emotion
parent responses, and Dr. Gottman’s five steps of emotion-coaching.
We encourage
you to apply a few of these skills and keep practicing. We would love to hear
about your experiences as you apply these chosen skills within your family.
__________________________________________________
What is coming next?
In our next lesson we will be focusing on fostering mental well-being with the growth mindset, gratitude, and optimism; which will include fostering positive praise and mindset exercises.
Feedback:
This course has been created by students for a final capstone class in teaching family life education.
Your feedback will help us learn and improve for future lessons in the course and support the process of becoming a family life educator. We value your insights and would love to hear from you, the participant.
Please take a few short moments to respond to this quick form for lesson two. A similar form will be found at the end of each lesson. It should take under 5 minutes to complete. Thank you!
References
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