Michelle McQuaid Stress Based Parenting Interview

Michelle McQuaid Stress Based Parenting Interview

As the Back to School specialist, Officeworks is focused on bringing the best out in children's minds. Firstly, through providing the school supplies that are crucial to learning and development and secondly by helping and inspiring parents and children alike with content that helps to -let their amazing out'.

In 2016, Officeworks has teamed up with Positive Psychologist and mother of two, Michelle McQuaid, to help parents prepare their children for their best year yet at school.

1. Help Your Kids Discover Their Strengths. For younger kids, all you need to do is start looking for the times they -light up' and try to name the strengths you can see them exercising. For kids 10+, the free VIA Youth Survey (www.viacharacter.org) is a great tool to discover their character strengths. Visual cues are very useful for kids, so help them to create a strengths poster highlighting the things they do best.

2. Praise Their Efforts. In a result-orientated world it's easy to focus only on the things our kids are achieving. We can miss celebrating the processes they are discovering and the efforts they are making to get these results. Praising children's intelligence and talent can harm their motivation and their performance. Instead try to praise their learning process - what they accomplished through practice, study, persistence, and good strategies. For example: 'I can see you've been practicing your drawing. What a great improvement."

3. Make Emotions Manageable. The way we feel impacts the way our brain works. Negative emotions like anger, anxiety and sadness tend to narrow our brain to focus on what's right in front of us and turn inwards. Positive emotions like joy, interest and gratitude tend to broaden our brain to see more possibilities. Help your child to name their emotions and become aware of how different feelings impact the way their brains work. Try creating a chart with the different feelings they have - this can make understanding and navigating emotions a far more manageable process.

4. Cultivate Heartfelt Positivity. In addition to broadening our minds, heartfelt positive emotions like awe, amusement and love help to build our emotional, physical, intellectual and social resources. They're like money in your child's bank of resilience for when the harder days fall in life. Create a jar of heartfelt positivity by asking your family to write down at least three ideas to put into the jar. As you plan for after school or weekend activities, grab an idea from the jar and put it into action.

5. Give Them A Jolt Of Joy. A little bit of stress is not bad for us, it's a natural part of learning and growth. However, when stress becomes overwhelming it helps to teach kids how to short circuit this feeling by creating a jolt of joy. An example could be humming a good song in their presence. It will help to restore happy brain hormones like dopamine and serotonin.

6. Count Kindnesses. Kindness has been found to help our brain experience pleasure, build trust and social connections. It triggers the hormone oxytocin in our blood stream, which helps lower our levels of stress and improve our focus. Help your children discover kindness as a super power by creating a -Kindness Challenge' at home, awarding points for acts of kindness. After a challenged is completed, ask them how they felt pursuing these and help them to notice the impact it can have.

7. Grow Their Gratitude. Researchers define gratitude as experiencing a sense of wonder and appreciation for life. Studies have found that it helps us to savour the good things that happen, to feel more confident and to cope in times of stress or even jealousy. Help your children grow their gratitude by checking in each night at the dinner table for the best part of their day and why they're grateful for it.

8. Catch Their Stories. As we try to make sense of the world our brains are constantly creating stories about why things are happening and what might happen next. These stories shape the way we think, feel and act. The problem is our brain often focuses on the worst possible outcomes, so when your child is struggling, try to hear the stories they're telling themselves. You could help them write or draw this. Are there any other explanations for what's unfolding they might have missed? Add these to the page. How does this change the story and what do they want to do as a result?

Interview with Positive Psychologist Michelle McQuaid

Question: What is stress based parenting?

Michelle McQuaid: The concept of strengths-based parenting is that parents ensure that they are helping their child to experience positive stress in a healthy environment.

Researchers suggest children can experience three different types of stress. Toxic stress is triggered by adverse experiences sustained over long periods of time where kids feel unable to effectively manage what's unfolding. Tolerable stress comes from a one-off intense event where the child has support and resources to heal and grow from the event. And lastly, positive stress is triggered by everyday adverse situations where the adversity is not extreme and is relatively short-lived.

Lea Waters, a Professor at the Graduate School of Education at Melbourne University, suggests that positive stress is a normal part of the developmental process that helps children to develop the essential life skills of coping with and adapting to new situations.

My role as the Officeworks Back to School Spokesperson is to highlight that parents can have a positive impact on their kids stress levels, especially around the busy Back to School period. Parents play an important role in cultivating the vital intellectual, emotional and social resources children need to not only have success at school, but also meet the everyday challenges of the future head on.


Question: Can you talk about how direct parent engagement can impact a child's ability to adequately cope with stress?

Michelle McQuaid: Parents often underestimate how stressed out their children can feel and the implications this stress can have on their ability to develop their psychological, social and educational resources. Negative emotions such as anger, anxiety and sadness are all extremely common particularly in teenage students. It is important to draw attention to these emotions as they notably arise to help children's brains focus on what's in front of them, and prevent them from turning these emotions into negative thoughts. Children need to be seen, be safe, be soothed, and feel secure, by their parents. By making the time to help your children feel valued, it helps them to build secure attachments to their parents, leaving them more confident to explore things like new friendship groups at school. As parents it's important that we help our children understand their emotions and to know that not all stress is bad, but instead often part of a natural and healthy learning and development process.

By helping your children name their emotions and find ways to navigate these feelings, we build their strengths to cope with the challenges that they will experience throughout their educational journey and also challenges posed later in life.


Question: What surprised you about the research piece?

Michelle McQuaid: What most surprised us about this particular research piece is how easily identifying and cultivating positive qualities in our children can have such a positive impact on a child's ability to manage their own stress levels and help to promote wellbeing. Most parents may not be aware that 50% of teenagers don't feel confident about their ability to handle their personal problems, and 42% feel they are not doing enough to manage their stress levels. This inability to manage emotions and stress can have a huge impact on their capability to productively focus on their studies, both at home or in the classroom. This inability to effectively manage their own emotions can also result in avoidance or aggressive coping responses.


Question: What advice do you have for parents of young children who stress?

Michelle McQuaid: The tips I've developed with Officeworks for the busy Back to School period aim to help parents easily implement the basic theories of strength-based parenting, giving their children the tools and confidence to cope with stresses both at school and at home.

The understanding of stress and how it impacts children is very important when considering the mental health of children. They are still going through crucial developmental milestones and have not yet fully developed the physical, psychological and social resources that enable them to cope with the demands that are placed upon them, particularly as they reach higher levels in school.

Reducing stress can be achieved by:
Making Emotions Manageable:
Helping your child manage their emotions will have a huge impact on their abilities to cope with stress throughout the whole school year – in the classroom, playground or at home. When you begin to notice signs of these negative emotions, encourage your child to openly name what emotion they are feeling, and encourage them to become aware of how this feeling is impacting them. This teaches students to identify when these negative emotions arise and gives them a better mindset to be able to manage the emotion, not letting it overwhelm them or their ability to focus on their studies. A visual tip parents can adopt to help children opening manage stress levels is to create a colourful chart with the different feelings they have. This again will help kids develop an understanding of how to navigate emotions and stress in a manageable, but fun way.
Catching Their Stories:
It is vital to stay aware and engaged in what is going on in your child's life, as children are trying to make sense of the world their brains are constantly creating stories about why things are happening and what might happen next. The problem is the young brain often focuses on the worst possible outcomes, which can result in stress. So when you begin to notice your child struggling, try to hear the stories they're telling themselves and help them to navigate their thoughts to a more positive outcome. You can do this by helping them to challenge the stories they may be telling themselves; turning them away from negative stories to memories they can learn and develop from. Help your child hunt the times they have been able to navigate stress or to look for equally believable alternative stories about why things may be difficult or feel overwhelming. It's important to understand that the stories we tell impact the way we think, feel and act, and that by choosing to invest our energy in stories that build rather than undermine our confidence can make stress more manageable.


Question: How can parents help their children discover strengths?

Michelle McQuaid: Helping children discover their strengths and resources is relatively easy to achieve. Start by try to build your children's confidence about their ability to navigate stress by looking for their strengths – the things they're good at and actually enjoy doing – and how they can draw upon these in challenging situations. When you give them feedback about the strengths you can see them using, focus on the efforts you can see them making, not just the outcomes that may, or may not, be achieved. This helps children to understand the positive qualities and positive processes they can use to navigate stress more successfully. It can be as simple as creating visual cues such as a -strengths' poster highlighting the things they do best. This is effect in supporting your child's journey, especially through their early school years. Clearly highlighting your child's strengths will also give them that added confidence of where they know they can clearly succeed ahead of starting a new school year.

The easiest way is to look for when your child lights up, meaning when they're more engaged and enjoying what they're doing this is a sure sign. Little wins are also important for building confidence in children – Officeworks has developed a fun, cognitive learning app called -Growing Minds' to keep kids' minds active outside the classroom. Small games and challenges can give children mini boosts throughout the week and in turn help build their confidence.


Question: What is the best way to praise a learning child?

Michelle McQuaid: Praising Their Efforts:
In a result-orientated world it's easy to focus only on the things our kids are achieving. We can miss celebrating the processes they are discovering and the efforts they are making to get these results.

Studies suggest only praising children's intelligence and talent can harm their motivation and performance. Instead try to praise their learning process, what they accomplished through practice, study, persistence, and good strategies. For example: "I can see you've been practicing your drawing. What a great improvement."


Question: How can we support teenagers who don't feel confident about their abilities to handle their personal problems?

Michelle McQuaid: Cultivate Positivity: The teenage brain undergoes many changes, emotions become bigger, social relationships become more important, they crave novelty and generally creativity flourishes. Try to draw on the positive aspects of these changes to help your teenager feel more confident about navigating stress.

In addition to broadening our minds, heartfelt positive emotions like awe, amusement and love help to build our emotional, physical, intellectual and social resources. They're like money in your teenager's bank of resilience for when the harder days fall in life. Create a jar of heartfelt positivity by asking your family to write down at least three ideas to put into the jar. To inject some spontaneity, grab an idea from the jar and put it into action. Including both young children and older kids in family decisions can increase also their confidence; reduce stress and even jealousy which is vital in teenagers as they are discovering themselves both academically and personally.

Grow Their Gratitude:
Studies have also found that encouraging gratitude can give kids a sense of appreciation for life. It helps children savor the good things that happen and help them to feel more confident in coping with jealousy and stressful situations. Help your child grow their gratitude by checking in each night at the dinner table for the best part of their day and why they're grateful for it.


Question: What is a kindness challenge? How can we setup a kindness challenge, in the home?

Michelle McQuaid: Counting Kindnesses:
Kindness has been found to help our brain experience pleasure, build trust and social connections, no matter what our age. It triggers the hormone oxytocin in our bloodstream which helps lower our levels of stress and improve our focus. Help your children discover kindness as a superpower by creating a 'Kindness Challenge' at home, awarding points for acts of kindness. After a challenged is completed, ask them how they felt pursuing these and help them to notice the powerful impact it can have.


Interview by Brooke Hunter