6 Steps to Unlocking Your Pre-Teens Potential- Part 1

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It's already been a challenge to cope with the trauma your grandkids have experienced. The thought of navigating the turbulent teen years makes your skin crawl. In part one of this episode of grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity Mark Higgs, a brilliant educator and mentor, presents a powerful concept for coping with the teen years by starting with proactively developing their potential.

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With experience in over 20 countries, Marcus has developed a profound understanding of human connection and the transformative power of relationships.

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Marcus believes that discovering and nurturing our innate greatness comes through the bonds we share with ourselves, our families, our communities, and the world around us.

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Drawing from this extensive experience, he introduces the show up framework, a transformative tool designed to help parents and guardians support their pre teens. He explains to us that during the preteen years, children experienced their first identity breaking, making it a crucial period for parent child communication. In this episode, Marcus shares invaluable strategies to guide your grandchildren through these formative years, fostering resilience and greatness. I hope you'll tune in to episode 15, six steps to nurturing your pre teens potential, part one, and equip yourself with the knowledge to support and empower your preteen grandchildren.

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Welcome to grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity in this podcast, we will delve deep into the challenges and and triumphs of grandparents raising grandchildren as we navigate the complexities of legal, financial, and emotional support. I invite you to join us on a journey of exploring thoughts, feelings, and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of childrearing for children who have experienced trauma, and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care.

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We'll discuss how we can change the course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's future, all within a supportive community that understands the unique joys and struggles, this podcast was made especially for you.

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Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, your experiences are valued, and your journey is honored.

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Now that I've gotten a handle on how to manage these children, I just get tense thinking, what am I going to do when they become teens? How can we handle this?

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We'll be 72 by the time our oldest grandchild turns 13, and 75 when the youngest does.

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Panic is the word that comes to my mind. But after my conversation with Marcus Higgs. The panic light went off and I. Saw an opportunity I really hadn't seen before, so I hope you will too. After listening to this two part series.

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As an educator to young people, how is it that you came to work, especially with pre teens around the world.

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You know, the first thing that came to mind after hearing that, and this is totally honest, it was, I love people. I was an educator in the classroom, and I would have parent teacher conferences, and I would hear some of the ordeals that the parents were going through. And I'm skilled or trained to bring forth what's inside the child. That's how I always looked at it. As an educator, you create the context for learning to take place. It's not anything you're pushing into the kid, but rather trusting that there's beauty inside and letting it come forth. Now, that said, I felt I was being limited in the classroom, quite honestly, with the number of kids with expectations being able to focus on the needs of this child, which is why I'm a big proponent of alternative education. You mentioned homeschools or micro schools when I'm a high school english language arts teacher. And one time, coming out of the classroom, I told my chairperson, you know what? English feels like therapy sometimes.

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And he told me, he said, that's why we call it the humanities, Marcus. We're teaching them how to be human. And that's the truth. We're teaching them how to be human. And there's going to be more space for this as the advent of AI comes. And I want to equip parents and grandparents and caregivers and people who are inside the kids lives of, hey, this is how we're human. That drove me to, yeah, teens. But then I looked at pre teens because that's the first identity breaking.

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Where can I have the most impact if you get them at this first identity breaking? I can explain what an identity breaking is, but if you get them there in these formative years, you set an outlook on life for the rest of their life. Or it's possible to. That's where you have the most influence to do this. And you're talking about the years of what to what? Everybody develops at different ages. Right? But they say adolescents when I say they. Speaking of Dan Siegel, Lisa Dumont and Ellen Galansky, just the experts say adolescence starts around ten and it ends around early twenties. Right? So the first time you're going to be experiencing this is from ten to 14 around that age. There's certain things that happen in that pocket of time that you can expect and that you can start laying the groundwork for other things that are going to develop. You came up with this framework. Show up, yes. That you use. Explain the acronym and what it stands for and how that works.

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Before we get into the solution, let's look at the problem or why we. We need the show up framework. Right. Right. Why do so many parents struggle with teens?

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When a kid is born and they come to this world, they're dependent.

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Right? They're looking to you to survive. They're looking to you for life. And maternal energy pulls them close. It says, you're safe, you're secure, you're loved, and I'm nurturing you. Right.

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I say maternal energy and then paternal energy. At their teenage years or adolescence, the beginning of adolescence, pushes them away, and it says, you're safe, you're secure, you're seen, you're soothed. And in that, pushing away, this is a natural part of human development. It's, hey, you need to be independent. You need to figure this out on your own. And I'm supporting you. Right. So when you have a healthy attachment, they know they can come back. But then it's also, hey, you know, you need to try this on your own. Now, independence is not the final form. It's interdependence. That's what a mature adult is. It's saying, I will take care of me to be in service to you if you take care of you to be in service to me. And that's a holistic family unit. But then in this pulling and pushing, where that tension is, that creates a holistic person.

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Now, in that pushing away, three things happen. I call it ice. There's an identity breaking. This kid is feeling like, okay, I'm a child. I'm a child. And then it's like, oh, no, I'm not a child. I'm an adult.

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Like, what is an adult? Like? There are all these expectations, and it's just like, oh, my goodness, who am I? What am I getting myself into? And that's when the flood of thoughts just started coming. Identity breaking. That's what I called it. And actually, at each stage of life is always an identity breaking. Life is continually asking, who are you? And you're answering, I am. Right.

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Then after I is c. Collaborative trust.

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This child has seen black and white since growing up. Zero to, let's say, ten. And what you've been telling them is gospel, meaning the truth. Or, you know, yeah, it's your worldview when they start to get exposed to other worldviews or right now, the Internet. But other peers and other adults in their life, they're like, oh, well, what mom and dad told me is not necessarily the truth. Can I trust them? And that's where skepticism starts. They haven't figured out nuance yet. That comes around 18. But skepticism is. I don't know who to trust.

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And that's why they turn away from us. And actually they feel judged sometimes if there's contention. So it's just like, okay, let me find other trustworthy people, trustworthy adults or peers. Inside my life. I see e is emotional management.

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Emotions, they tell us what we want. And do we feel a well being about moving towards those goals? Emotions do five things, but two major ones are how do I feel about my well being? And am I moving towards who I want to be? And is reality congruent with my thoughts, or does reality match my expectations?

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This is their first rodeo. Like, they don't know how to manage emotions, so they're all over the place, and that's why we need to show up for them. And that's how I get to the show up framework. So the problem is ice, identity breaking, collaborative mistrust and emotional management. Yeah. So then show up starts with. First start with a strong identity. Everything that we do, everything we do comes from our identity. Here's the thing, you get to choose that. We live in the stories of other people, often where we think, you know, this is society, because all culture is. Is people like us do things like this. So that's collective identity. So we feel we're part of a collective, but then we're also an individual.

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In my framework, we start with a strong identity, and that is we take the virtues and in action tests. Have you heard of this?

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No. It's called the via. It's a survey of 24 characteristics that are in everybody, in all cultures, all religions, all faiths.

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It's ancient wisdom and modern wisdom from positive psychology.

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They said these characteristics are found in people. Some of the virtues are creativity, curiosity, gratitude, leadership, and so on. And there are five that are most expressed inside a person, and they can shift. Right.

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But when you figure out what these virtues are, these are the characteristics by which we connect. Right. And then their values. Values simply means what's important to you.

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Education is important to me, and that's my value. And I have my virtues show up in my values, and I know who I am. Of course, I have some life experience. I've been tested in this, and that's what I try to do for my students. What are your virtues and values? Live into that. H is hold space for collaboration. Now, when a kid is going through trouble, they oftentimes think, what's wrong with me?

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This is the parent and this is the child. Or let's say grandparent grandchild. And when they're going through all their stressors, as you spoke of in your community, a lot of the kids have aces, you know, adverse experiences. Yes. They think, what's wrong with me? Or I had undiagnosed dyslexia. I'm a writer now, right. But I don't know how to spell this and I'm getting graded on this. There's a problem here, and I think I'm the problem.

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It's called collaborative problem solving. Whereas you bring them into the conversation and you say, what do you think about this?

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It's active listening. And then you say, as a parent or as a caregiver, this is where you can find skills or you can be supported. It's not anything wrong with you, and I'm here to support you in regards to that.

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It teaches them how to find support, because whenever you're not moving towards your goal, it's either you're not supported or you don't have the skills. One of the two. So either you get the skills or you find the support. O is open up communication.

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The quality of our life is directly related to our ability to communicate. That is talking to yourself or talking with others. Right. W is wonder and explore this world together. Happy people have projects. That is to say, I want to see something in the world and I know I have agency to bring it about. And that's how you up. Unveil your potential.

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That's what the show up framework is. I really do believe you are the universe experiencing itself, which is development and which is expansion, which is, I want to support parents and educators do this to show up for their kids, to bring out the best. When you have children, and I'm sure you experience children in the classroom that have been through trauma or they have families that are broken, how do you get them undoing what's been done? Yeah, yeah. Beautiful question.

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The quote that came to mind was Carl Jung. It says, I'm not what happened to me, I'm what I choose to become.

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Oh, man. I say, oh man because we are the stories we tell ourselves.

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When I was in Spain, I was teaching an english class and it was, I think, 6th grade, 6th or 7th, and we would stream the students, meaning there's a high achievers, mid and then low achievers. They were c.

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And I asked this kid, you know, why are you showing up like this? And he said, I'm a c grade student. Anyways, it doesn't matter. And he wouldn't make an effort just because this label was on him. In the same school, we did some volunteer work with truant kids, kids who weren't going to school and they had to go to special school. And I remember I wanted to volunteer and the principal said, you don't want to help them. Those are the bad kids.

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Right. And that's exactly how I felt, too. And I was just like, kids move towards our expectations. So first thing I do is I let them know I'm holding an expectation of greatness in you. I see greatness in you and I interact with you as such.

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Right. And what greatness means is we're going to stretch a little bit towards what you want. And when I say what you want, because most kids, they do well, if they can do well, and most kids want to do well, all of us, we want to thrive. At the core of it, we choose not to thrive is because, well, everything we do is meeting our needs. So I have to think, what does this kid need? I have to get curious about them, what do they want? And I start having that conversation inside their head.

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Angela Duckworth says, every kid just needs one psychologically wise adult in their life. And what's psychologically wise?

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Psychologically wise just means a person who can co think with them to help them make sense of their thoughts and make that progress with them. There's this Ernest Hemingway quote where he says, the world breaks us all and some are made stronger in the broken places. I hold a hopeful future for everybody that I meet. And I tell kids, if, first of all, I don't argue with people.

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So when kids tell me, no, no, no, no, so on, I will hold this belief until you start to see it. I will give you evidence and examples of this, of what I see, until you start to believe it. That's great. Yeah. Because people move towards our expectations. Can you have a child that says they don't want to go to school because school is boring or they don't want to learn, how do you respond to them?

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One, I would need to know more context. Yeah.

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I only laugh because I see it often.

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Sometimes I think I get it. I understand why you say it's boring. If I had to go through what you had to go through, there's a reason I chose to come out of the classroom. And this is not to put, there's no blaming, no shame, no complaining. But sometimes if you ask a person just to sit down, be quiet and do this thing which you do not find relevant, that would be boring also.

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Yeah. And you're being judged on it. So. So again, I have to look at what's happening in the class. Now, this kid might be saying that just because it's not aligned with what they want to create. I think kids are inherently curious. They want to know and they want to express themselves. If you have a child that says they're just not good at math, I don't want to learn math because I don't like math. I was one of those kids that did well in certain forms of math, but I was a very visual person, so if I couldn't see something, then it was just really hard for me to remember or take an interest in it.

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Do you approach the child from the point of view that there are times in your life when you're going to need to know how to add numbers together? Because maybe you're a farmer and you need to know how many seeds are planted in a field. Right. But it might be relevant. If it's not relevant to them, then you have to find ways for it to be relevant. Is that the way you look at it? Well, let me ask you, I only picked up this. This is my book from my grade fives, the goodbye book. When I left them, they wrote me this book, and I remember a student who was bad at math because there was always evidence and examples of them being bad at math, and he took on that identity. And I remember working with him for six months.

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What gets praised gets repeated.

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What gets praised gets repeated. Right. So there's that one. Right? There's that. Second thing is, once I did bad, heard it forever. Twice I did good, heard it never.

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What are we focusing on? And I remember with this student, if he's making an effort, I would praise that effort every little bit and celebrate because I want to see me making progress. He wants to see him making progress. So I would celebrate that and not fake celebration. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you got it. And then when they don't get it, I'm just curious about why let them think through it. So you're scaffolding to meet them, for them to be autonomous, because they want to try it. Right. They want to make sense.

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Yeah. So there's. There's that thought. The other thought is, and you actually said it, if it's not relevant to them, like, why. Why am I doing this? We find that with kids that are classified with ADHD, if it's not relevant, it's boring. They don't learn. But if it's something they are interested in, then their receptors are more active. I hear you say ADHD, but I think that's everybody. Until you grow that executive function of knowing how to focus and so on. But that's.

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Anybody? The reason we're engaged in this conversation is because it's highly relevant to you, highly relevant to me. We like things that have some relevancy.

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And I told one parent one time, not until your child sees why it's valuable to them will they know how to do something. I'll give you an example of Richard Branson from Virgin Wilbur.

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He has ADHD. So, again, we are the stories we tell ourselves, and he was a multimillionaire heading on the way to a billionaire, and he couldn't do a p and l sheet.

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He did not let that part of the story stop him from pursuing his desire. Until one time, his accountants pulled him out and said, this is what a p and l sheet is. You sound like you don't know what you're talking about. He didn't know what he was talking about because it wasn't relevant to him. Hence the reason. I think in many schools, when they try to push them through a particular mold, then we're not looking at the individual child. And. That'S a problem to use language of traditional education when they're not meeting a standard. And, again, that doesn't sit with me well.

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So we would say moving towards standard, meeting standard or exceeding it. But what is the standard? Right. If we're all developing at different rates? The reason we have a standard is because we say at this particular age, they should be. Be careful. When you say should, they should be at this level.

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A kid could be below it or could be above it, but easier said than done, because there are other challenges that we have with moving a kid through a system. Let me see.

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First of all, I have to acknowledge that the kid does not like something. There's a reason the kid does not like it. And you know what? They may be saying that I don't like school, maybe academics. It may be social. It may be that they're not skilled in handling that emotion there. So you have to be curious to go through these different reasonings. And then after I figure out what the reason is, I would invite the kid again to do collaborative problem solving, to ask them, what are your thoughts about it?

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And then I would give them my thoughts about it, setting limitations, expectations, and so on. And then we agree on a solution that we're gonna try.

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We agree on something that, let's try this, and then if it's not work, if it doesn't work, we'll try something else. This was such a meaty conversation with Marcus Higgs and I hated to stop it here, but I broke it up into two episodes because we're going to get into a whole nother ballgame next week. Does your teen hate school? And if you say black, do they say white? According to Marcus, that's normal.

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When do you need to be worried, though? As pre teens become more influenced by their peers, how can parents encourage them to make wise choices and resist negative peer pressure? I hope you'll tune in next week as we listen to part two of unlocking your teens potential.

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Thanks so much for joining us today for another episode of grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity I encourage you to share your challenges and your successes with us. Your story is undoubtedly one someone else needs to hear.

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You can submit your stories to the links provided in the podcast information. Your contributions will enrich upcoming conversations, creating a more supportive community in which we can learn and grow together. If you enjoyed this show, please share it with a friend that needs to hear. And if you love the show and you're listening on a broadcasting platform like Apple or Spotify, just scroll down in your app and please leave us a review. Does your teen hate school? If you say black, do they say white? According to Marcus, that's normal. When do you need to be worried? Is the question. As pre teens become more influenced by their peers, how can parents encourage them to make wise choices and resist negative peer pressure? I hope you'll tune in to part two of unlocking your teens potential.

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Thank you for tuning in to grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity remember, you are not alone. Together we can find strength and hope in the face of adversity.

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Peace be with you and I pray that you find some time this week to listen to your inner wisdom amongst the noise and the pandemonium of this world.