Mind in the Making

Reducing Aggression in Children

This article is cross posted on The Huffington Post.

Last week, I wrote about preventing aggression in young children, but what about reducing violence when it has already flared up.

Several years ago, Families and Work Institute (FWI) conducted a nationally representative study of young people in the fifth through the twelfth grades on this issue. Our findings—as always when we study young people’s views—were surprising and enormously helpful.

We found that although much public discussion about aggression has focused on extreme violence, such as school shootings, the largest proportion of young people talk about teasing that goes beyond being playful; about cruel put-downs and gossip; and about rejections as very real aggression to them.

This emotional aggression is very much a part of young people’s lives. In fact, two-thirds of young people (66%) have been teased or gossiped about in a mean way at least once in the past month and 25% have had this experience five times or more.

This is not to say that other kinds of aggression are unimportant—almost one third (32%) has been bullied at least once and 12% have been bullied five times or more in the past month; 46% of young people have been hit, shoved, kicked or tripped at least once and 18% have experienced this five times or more in the past month. Finally, one in 12 has experienced extreme violence.

Young people focus on emotional aggression as the trigger for other kinds of aggression—and this insight is echoed in the seminal studies of Larry Aber of New York University.

Aber has been especially interested in aggression in younger children because it can escalate into to greater aggression during the teen and adult years—and interfere with children’s learning. He wanted to know: What are the roots of aggression in children? When in a child’s life is aggression likely to flare up? Does it continue to escalate or can it be prevented? If so, how?

Aber says that there were twenty years of attempts to improve children’s “repertoire” of problem-solving skills. Did these efforts yield results? Yes, but “only a little bit,” Aber says. So the question became why.
Building on the work of Kenneth Dodge of Stanford University, Aber and his colleagues began to probe what goes on in children’s minds when they are provoked. They asked children how they would respond to an ambiguous hypothetical situation—such as one child bumping into another in a school cafeteria and spilling a drink on the second child. Which children would decide to “push back harder?” And which children would decide to use other problem-solving skills and why?

They discovered a missing link, a link they call “an appraisal process.” In the spilled-drink scenario above, for example, the child who has been bumped makes an immediate assessment of the situation: Was this an accident? Maybe this kid doesn’t like me? Maybe this kid is trying to hurt me?

For the children who assume that others are out to get them, having skills to handle conflict are relatively worthless because they have a bias to attribute the action as hostile—even when there isn’t enough information to be certain. They jump to conclusions. Given this insight, efforts to curb aggression in children of all ages have moved to include what Larry Aber calls “attributional retraining;” that is, helping children step back when something happens to them and make sense of the situation.

Aber and his colleague have evaluated several school-based approaches to curbing violence, most recently a curriculum in the New York City public schools, called Reading, Writing, Respect, and Resolution. This program doesn’t separate teaching children to handle conflict from other kinds of academic teaching. Each unit is based on a children’s book selected for its literary quality and its relevance to the theme. Through discussions, writing exercises, and role-play, children explore the meaning of the book, learn how to appraise complex situations, and then are taught how to resolve conflicts in these situations.

The early results of this research are very promising. Children are less aggressive and the reading scores of those most prone to behavior problems have improved.

What are the implications for parents? For me, it is promoting the life skill of perspective taking in everyday situations with our kids. Whether we are talking, watching television or a movie, or reading books with our kids, ask them to think about the perspectives of the characters in the story: What are they thinking and feeling? Why are they acting as they do?

In FWI’s study of young people, young people told us again and again they wanted help, especially to stop the “mean behavior” that goes on everyday. In the words of one young person, “if we are part of the problem, then we need to be part of the solution.”

This research gives us the tools to help young people be part of the solution!

Preventing Aggression in Children

Since the days when my children were little, child development researchers have made great headway in understanding the genetic, biological and family triggers of aggression. There have also been new and much more sophisticated studies on how to prevent aggression or reduce it, if it has already flared up in children.

A new study by Colleen O’Neal, Laurie Miller Brotman and their colleagues at the New York University Child Study Center and by Daniel Pine of the National Institute of Mental Health, just published in Child Development, is adding to that literature.

If asked when my son was little, I would have told you he was prone to aggression—his temper often seemed like unexpected bolts of lightening from a clear sky. Those days are long gone for us—he is an incredible man, but I always read the research on aggression with a deep interest. What could I have learned if I had been the parent of a young child with a temper today? What might I have done?

The group that O’Neal and their colleagues studied could be considered a worst-case scenario for aggression. They went through the court records in New York City for youth under the age of 16 and selected families where there were young siblings. They then followed these four-year-old children and families over a 24-month period, during which time the families and the children participated in a program to improve parenting practices and preschoolers’ social competence. Among their numerous findings, three stand out to me as of greatest interest to parents.

First, the parenting program worked—it did reduce aggression. Specially, it helped parents be less harsh, be more consistent, be less critical of their children, and use positive methods of managing their children’s behavior. I know this sounds obvious, but if you have ever been confronted with nonstop aggressive behavior in a child, what we know we should do and what we are tempted to do can be quite different! The desire to be positive can easily evaporate and the desire to retaliate can be powerful. This study adds to a large body of literature that says that time-outs are more effective than harsh and punishing discipline.

The second important finding is that parental warmth makes a major difference. Children are less aggressive when their parents are warm and caring. This parenting program helped the parents become warmer. The researchers measure parental warmth by observing parents and children together. They assess whether the parent holds the child close and shows physical affection; talks with the child and answers the child’s questions; helps the child succeed at what he or she is trying to do; and acknowledges the child’s success.

Updates on the Science of Children’s Development: A New Study by Annie Bernier, Stephanie Carlson, and Natasha Whipple on How Parents Can Help Young Children Gain Life Skills

Cross-posted from the Huffington Post:

I have spent the past eight years reading child development research, interviewing leading scientists, and we have even filmed these scientists as they conduct their studies.

I have been driven by the question: what can we learn from studies of child development that will help our children thrive now and in the future?

As the parent of grown children and as a professional in child development, I have the time and knowledge to understand this research and I have the passion to translate it for all of us.

I have put many of these lessons learned into my forthcoming book, Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills that Every Child Needs, to be published in April by HarperStudio.

But there is always new research and we continue to go out and interview and film these studies. So this begins a new series of blogs where I will share what I am learning.

I am excited about a new study, just published in Child Development. In this study, Annie Bernier of the University of Montreal, Stephanie Carlson of the University of Minnesota, and Natasha Whipple of the University of Montreal look at what parents can do to promote young children’s “executive functions.” Executive functions involve being able to pay attention and focus, to hold different ideas in our minds at the same time, to think flexibly, and to have the self control to inhibit our tendency to go on automatic but instead to do something that furthers a goal we have. My eight years of looking at research have convinced me that executive functions are involved in the life skills that I see as most essential to our children thriving, now and in the future.

First, how did these researchers measure executive functioning in children at 18 and at 26 months? They played games with the children. For example: they hid an attractive sticker under one of three colored pots in full view of a child and asked the child to find it. Then they made that task harder for older children, by covering the pots with a blanket, or even by moving the pots around, while they were covered by the blanket—a more difficult game of “hide and seek.” All of these games involve focusing and remembering more than one thing at the same time.

Another way the researchers measured executive functioning was by having the child first feed a mommy doll with a large spoon and a baby doll with a small spoon and then asking the children to switch—to feed the mommy doll with the baby spoon and the baby doll with the mommy spoon. That task calls on children to inhibit what they have just learned and do the opposite (they have to have the self control to go off of “automatic” in pursuit of a goal).

The researchers had a number of important findings. For example: they found that sensitivity matters—understanding what your child is trying to say to you in actions or in words and responding in a caring and warm way.

They also found that talking about what the child is thinking and feeling matters too—giving children a window into understanding “minds at work”—their own and others. This is as simple as saying: “you seem to want that book,” or “looks like you’ve had enough.”

Of greatest importance in this study is supporting children to be more autonomous. The researchers measured this by giving young children puzzles that were challenging and then videotaped mothers and children working on the puzzles together.

The mothers who helped the children most:

• Structured doing the puzzle so that the challenge was appropriate and not overwhelming to the children;
• Encouraged children as they worked on the puzzle, giving helpful hints and suggestions, using a tone of voice that communicates “I am here to help”;
• Followed the children’s pace, gave children reasonable choices for how to work on the puzzle (“would you like to try the blue piece next or the red piece?”), and didn’t take over and finish the puzzle for the children—but helped the children do it themselves.

In Bernier, Carlson and Whipple’s puzzle game, mothers are helping their children cope with a slightly challenging situation—not by taking over—but by helping children find their own ways of managing the challenge. They are also promoting their children’s focus and self control.

Many of you reading this will probably say, “I do this with my kids.” You may not have known how important it is. In fact, the small things we do everyday with our children help them build the life skills so that they can thrive today and for many tomorrows to come.

What do you do to help you children manage slightly stressful situations more autonomously and in the process, build their skills in focus and self control?

Listen to the “What Kids Really Think About Their Working Parents” Podcast

Great discussion with Ellen Galinsky, Lisa Belkin, and Dr. Joshua Coleman: click here for the podcast. (Note: the Talkshoe service doesn’t like Firefox, for some reason. If the link doesn’t work, try another browser. Sorry).

Lisa Belkin blogged about the show here. For highlights, check out the live Twitter feed on Fem2pt0, with good quotes, including:

# Coleman: Don’t think about “fixing” your kids. Focus on what brings you meaning and value. #worklife #moms #fem2

RT @ellengalinsky: RT @morraam: Thats what I would term my generation “Caught.” #fem2 #worklife #families #fem2

RT @mgyerman: #fem2 Constant worry about messing kids up and making every second a “teaching lesson” is futile. #worklife #fem2

What constitutes an attractive man? There’s now a lot of confusion around this question. #worklife #moms #dads #fem2

Today, more dads now home with kids, but for the WRONG REASONS – the current economic collapse. #worklife #dads #moms #fem2

Women’s high-standards, playing gate-keeper…Huge obstacle to moving to more even labor division #worklife #moms #dads #fem2

Galinsky: New parents start out wanting to be perfect, then evolve to wanting to be good enough. #worklife #moms #fem2

RT @mgyerman: When old family structure broke down, people turned to parenting advice books. Now, they use the internet. #worklife #fem2

And my favorite, Dr. Coleman paraphrasing Jung: “Jung: Nothing effects children more deeply than the unlived life of parents.” One of the biggest gifts we can give their children is a happy fulfilled life for us as parents and people. Thank you Joshua Coleman!!

Don’t Seal Your Child’s Fate Based on a Kindergarten Test!

Cross posted from the Huffington Post:

If you haven’t read New York Magazine’s January 31, 2010 article on “The Junior Meritocracy,” read it right now. New York has done a stupendous job of summarizing the best research arguing that children’s fate should NOT be sealed by a test they take for Kindergarten admission at age four. Simply put, these tests do not provide a good indication of a child’s future.

Reading this article, made me think of Ed Zigler, the well-known developmental psychologist from Yale University whom I’ve heard say again and again that the ethical code of psychologists should be the same code as that of doctors: “first do no harm.” And yet, here is an instance where real harm is being done.

Not only are children unfairly being screened in and out of opportunities (the public or private school they attend) that will affect their lives, but increasing numbers of them are being tutored to take these tests. The effects of the kind of tutoring go beyond the impact of the tests–at worst, giving kids dosages of “drill and kill,” and “teaching to the test” that are too high.

And yet the horrible irony is that these tests and tutoring are not tapping into the “life skills” that have far more to do with children’s future than IQ tests. Jennifer Senior, the author of the New York story concludes her article by talking about Columbia University’s Walter Mischel’s marshmallow test–the experiment originally conducted in the 1960s where children were given a choice between one marshmallow now or two marshmallows if they could wait for fifteen minutes–because in following up on these children later in life, Mischel found that the children who could wait had higher SAT scores. Senior says:

Maybe our schools ought to be screening children for self-discipline and the ability to tolerate delayed gratification, rather than intelligence and academic achievement. It seems as good a predictor of future success as any.

Using the Marshmallow Test as a screening test (no matter how humorous the image) is obviously NOT the answer. I agree with Sam Meisels of the Erikson Institute who advocates in this article and elsewhere that schools need to get a more comprehensive view of young children over time in their classrooms.

I do think that part of the answer is for families and teachers to promote this and other life skills (such as making connections and helping children learn to take on challenges) in fun and playful ways–that is the conclusion I have drawn from eight years of interviewing more than 75 leading researchers on children’s learning and development for my forthcoming book, Mind in the Making. When we interviewed Walter Mischel, he said:

“The advantage for the young child who knows how to delay gratification is that they’re likely [to] be able to pursue academic and personal goals with less frustration, with less distraction.”

So what’s a parent to do? Right now, parents are caught in a catch 22. If they don’t get their children ready for the test, others will and their child may be a disadvantage.

Yes, we can and should promote life skills that matter, but we also have to deal with these tests. If there ever were a time for a parents’ movement, it is now. And if there ever were a just cause, this is among the best!

Homemade Playdough and other snow-day projects

Here in Boston it’s a snowy, cold day and we’re inside. On a day like today you need an activity that engages kids and the grown-ups. A project to stick with for a little while, no pun intended. A friend suggested the toddler and I make homemade play-dough today. So I asked for recipes on Facebook and here is my favorite:

3 c. salt
3/4 c. vegetable oil
4 Tbsp Cream of Tartar
6 c. water – add food coloring of your choice…
Cook all ingredients over medium heat until thick, about 2 minutes. Stir constantly to avoid burning.

1/6 of this recipe is enough for 1 child. Store playdough in an air-tight container.

Also, another friend suggested adding food flavoring extracts to make the dough smell yummy- like vanilla or almond. Yum!

Lois Backon of Families and Work Institute suggests we also, “Clean out your kitchen cabinets of pots and pans and let him sort and bang and make music, while he learns the names of them.”

What are your snow-day learning activities that both kids and adults can enjoy?

A Tale of Two Worlds: High School and B-School

From the Huffington Post today:

I’ve spent the past eight years immersed in the science of early learning, working with researchers from the world’s great universities. We have distilled this science into seven essential life skills you can teach your children (not typical academic achievement-oriented skills. Real life skills). The result of this journey is Mind in the Making, a book, awareness campaign, and teaching approach to early learning. The best thing about these skills is that you can apply them to your daily life, no matter how old you are. Each week, I’ll share with you real-life examples of these skills at play, and I encourage you to share your observations with me on Twitter (@ellengalinsky). Here is my first story:

World One:
Picture this: a group of young people from Youth Onstage have created and are performing a play called Work, Play & You–A Love/Hate Triangle at New York City’s Castillo Theater:

Here is one of the first scenes called “Security Check:”
Some of the young people in the cast play security guards; others play students waiting to be checked into their school building. They have obviously created this scene from their own experiences attending inner city schools. Because the scene is so powerful, I will share it with you from the play’s script:
Guard 1: Come on, come on. If you were any slower, you’d be going backwards.
Guard 2: Take that hat off. And get those rainbows out of your pockets.
Student: Hey, man I got the right to have rainbows in my pockets.
Guard 3: Don’t give us no attitude. Empty ‘em. Now!
(Student 1 empties his pockets and exits.)
(Second student comes through.)
Guard 2: Wait a minute. Is that glitter?
Student 2: (holding up the bag) Yes, it is–this backpack is sprinkled with happiness.
Guard 2: Go back outside and clean it off.
(Student 2 goes back out.)
(Third student comes through smiling.)
Guard 2: Discard that smile.
(Student has a hard time getting rid of her smile.)
Guard 2: Do you want it ripped off your face?
(She stops smiling and is waved in. Fourth student comes through.)
Guard 1: Wait, wait, do you see what I see in that bag?
(Guards 2 and 3 look.)
Guard 3: Yes, it’s definitely a glimmer of hope.
Guard 2: (opening bag, taking the hope out) We’ll keep that. If it’s still alive at the end of the semester, you can have it back.
Student 4: Please officer, I need that hope. It won’t hurt anyone.
Guard 2: Hope has no place in school. Get to class.
(Student 4 exits. Fifth student come in looking very sad.)
Guard 1: She looks depressed enough for school.
Guard 2: Yeah, she’s fine, let her through.
(Student 2 returns.)
Guard 1: Her bag’s clean now.
Guard 2: Yeah, but she’s a troublemaker. Scan her.
Guard 3: Okay, assume the position. Spread ‘em, spread em.
(Student 2 holds her arms out and spreads her legs. Guard 3 scans her. Looks in student’s hair.)
Guard 3: Wow! There’s dreams in her weave.
Guard 1: You’ve got some attitude problem, girl. Go home and wash those dreams out of your hair. Don’t come back until they’re gone.
Guard 2: I don’t know what’s wrong with kids these days.
(Sixth student enters.)
Guard 1: This bag has set off every alarm.
Guard 2: Open it up.
(Sixth student takes things out of bag.)
Guard 1: Self respect? You know that’s against the rules here.
Guard 2: Songs? Creativity is banned.
Guard 3: Imagination!
(The Security Guards are shocked.)
Student 6: I need my imagination.
Guard 1: Not here you don’t.
Guard 3: This one’s a real criminal.
All Three Guards: You’re expelled!

As this powerful play, directed by Dan Friedman, continues, there is scene after scene where a character named Work and a character named Play compete for “everyman.” As one of the actors says in the beginning of the play: “When you go to school, you’re forced to leave play at home or on the street or wherever. They just don’t want it in the classroom.”

World Two
I saw this play on Sunday January the 10th, and following the play served as one of the discussants for a conversation with the audience and the cast. Then I went home and turned to the most serious of serious sections of the Sunday New York Times, the business section.

And there I read a front page article by Lane Wallace, entitled, “Multicultural Critical Theory. At B-School? The point of this article is that business school students need to learn the essential skills of critical thinking and perspective taking. As the article says, students need “to learn how to approach problems from many perspectives and to combine various approaches to find innovative solutions.”

Lest you think that this is only a radical idea, it is being implemented at such august B-Schools as Harvard and Stanford and the C.E.O. of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, John J. Fernandes, estimates that while about 25 percent of association-accredited schools are changing their curriculum to develop more sustainable leaders now, he expects that figure to reach 75 percent in 10 years.

B-Schools are making these changes because they lead to better results–future business leaders who can possibly make better decisions.

So it was a day of two worlds–the world of high school education where students have to leave their best selves at the door and the world of business schools, where some of the leading institutions are revising their programs to help students obtain important life skills.

Read more here

Mind in the Making: an 8 month old learns to crawl

Joseph Campos from UC Berkeley has illustrated how babies use and interpret adult feedback when determining whether to take on new challenges. Yes, that’s right.

Anyone who doesn’t believe that infants don’t deliberately take on challenges has not seen my eight month old try to crawl. Night and day, he’s up on all fours, practicing, practicing. It’s thrilling to watch, but I also feel for him when he gets frustrated, or falls. The amazing thing is, if he feels safe and supported with an adult nearby, he always gets right back up again! And if I encourage him, he crawls towards me with huge, concentrated effort, and his determination triples. I think these photos capture it:

Taking on Challenges is one of the seven essential skills Ellen Galinsky discusses in her new book, Mind in the Making. For more information, please click here.

Throw a baby a bone

A few weeks ago an article appeared on my internet home page with the screaming headline “Dogs as Smart as 2-year-old Kids.” You can read the article here.
 
Really?!  I love dogs, and know quite a few very bright ones.  And certainly, dogs have some surprising mental capacities, but they are in no way equivalent to two-year-olds. 
 
For example, the study says that your average dog “can learn 165 words (similar to a 2-year-old child).”   165 words?   Researchers Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff in their wonderful book “How Babies Talk” point out that, between the ages of 18-months and two-years, toddlers typically learn nine new words a day… and that by four years-old, they have some 5,000 words at their command!  Arf!
 
And while this study suggests that dogs are the equivalent of toddlers in their numerical understanding, Elizabeth Spelke has shown that six-month-old babies can detect the difference between large and small number of things, like telling the difference between a set of 16 and a set of 8 dots.
 
It wasn’t so long ago that babies were thought to come into the world as blobs – sponges absorbing the world around them.  And, as the dog study seems to suggest, that real learning doesn’t happen until they start talking.  But what the newest research shows is that, in fact, there is so much going on in a baby’s brain.  That from the very beginning, babies are unlocking the social, cognitive, and emotional world around them… even if we (the very smart adults around them) can’t see it. 
 
You can read about even more of the truly amazing capacities of babies, read this Op-Ed in the New York Times by another researcher featured in Mind in the Making, Alison Gopnik.   
 
What kind of evidence do you see in your baby that shows he or she is learning?

Along the visual cliff

About a month ago, the Sears Tower (or, as it’s known by its new name, the Willis Tower) unveiled a glass balcony on its 103rd floor. Visitors get to creep about four feet out from the building…and 1,353 feet high above the city of Chicago.

(You can see some dizzying pictures of it here)

Some of us on the Mind in the Making team were talking about this other day and just how much it reminded us of an experiment we filmed, UC Berkeley Professor Joe Campos’ Visual Cliff. In it, a baby is placed on a large box that’s covered by a piece of clear plexi-glass. Halfway across, there’s what looks like a drop, though it’s clearly safe to cross thanks to the sturdy platform. On the opposite side of the platform is the baby’s mom, either making a smiling face (signaling to the baby that it’s okay to cross), or a fearful face (which tells the baby to stay put).

You can watch the experiment here.

The experiment is so powerful… you can really see the babies reading their parents to try to figure out what to do.

If you’re around kids, you see this phenomenon all the time. A child falls, and then looks up to an adult to see how they’re supposed to react. Calm adult, calm(er) child. Hysterical adult… well, you can imagine.

Professor Campos’ experiment is with babies, but I frequently have these experiences with my four-year-old daughter. Just yesterday, we were at the beach where the waves were pretty rough, so all she could do was play along the surf. She started off being hesitant to go near the churning water, but eventually felt confident enough to creep closer – but not before she looked back to get a read from me about what she could and couldn’t do. The nervous mother in me wanted her to stay on the dry sand, but I knew that it was a wonderful and safe (her dad and I were right there if anything should happen) way to enjoy the ocean, so I made my face reflect a sense of security.

She’s getting older and her forays into independence come more and more frequently. And since I want to protect her, it’s indeed a stressful time for me. But I have to let her try new things… and as long as she keeps looking back to get my approval, I’ll be okay.

Now, I just wonder who there is to look to on top of the Sears Tower to let you know it’s safe!

Share your stories us about how your child decodes your ‘emotional readout.’