Realizing the importance of the stories our kids tell themselves.
My realization that my sons internal narrative is the biggest lever for improved performance. An insight with no results yet.
I’ve been struggling to get my sons energy going in the right direction. I’ve tried carrots, sticks and locking him out in the Wyoming cold until he changes his attitude. The return on investment seems to be negative for all of these so I’ve been looking for higher leverage, but still low risk, actions I can take.
After reading a bunch of articles, talking to psychologist friends, and skimming some books here’s the one thing that I think works. Focus on changing his internal narrative (and don’t try to change anything when he’s hungry or tired)
First here are my son’s symptoms. He’s smart enough as demonstrated by his ability to read advanced books, learn the rubiks cube and beat me at chess. However, when he doesn’t “see the point” he refuses to do any work and call the activity boring or pointless.
As he digs into his position, he’ll say things I'm not good at that. Then, he'll clearly define what he is good at which uncoincidentally are the things he likes to do and spent hundreds of hours on them.
School is one of those things that he does not like to do. He claims that many of his classes ask him to do boring repetitive tasks and he refuses to do the work. I have tied many of his privileges to his grades and when his grades drop and he loses these privileges he falls into a mopey attitude where he doesn't want to do anything. When's his grades drop to a too low it feels hopeless for him to ever earn his privileges back. His behavior gets worse and it feels like there aren’t any more levers to pull since all his privileges are gone.
Part of this is on the teachers because I know some of the classes are boring and pointless, but that's for another day. To get him back on track I’ll spend a day in the library so he can focus and see that the work is not that hard.
Most of the articles in my search results for motivating teenagers are clickbait and without realistic suggestions.
However, one article mentioned The lack of internal motivation as the route cause for adolescent misbehavior. And it suggested that one's internal narrative determines their internal motivation. So controlling the internal narrative is the high leverage activity that I'm looking for. It sounds obvious but I’ve been living in carrot-stick world so it was mind blowing.
It makes sense though. You do what your mind tells you. When Nick Wilson was 12 and a couple Shoshonis offered him a horse to run away with them he did it because the voice inside him said getting a horse will be way better than tending sheep year after year.
The idea that my sons internal dialog was rallying against my objectives for him explained why they were so hard for him to complete. So what the hell is thing that’s controlling my son and sabotaging my evenings.
The internal narrative is what one tells their self about who they are. I liked the way one blog put it. Ones narrative consists of.
your reconstructed past
your perceived present
your imagined future
These aren’t hard facts, they are merely the stories you tell yourself.
Person you talk to the most is yourself. The brain has always talking to itself. This internal chatter is louder and more frequent than any other voice in your life so important that it’s not misleading you to a life that a could have been better.
All this is to say that I’ve spent less time telling my son what to do, setting consequences or dangling bribes and more time asking my son about what he’s thinking, why he thinks that way and telling him who. When the opportunity arises I’ll tell him who I think he is and where I think he’s going.
ChatGPT suggested these ways to change your internal narrative.
Identify your current narrative: Pay attention to your inner voice and what it tells you about yourself. Write down your thoughts to help you better understand them.
Challenge your narrative: Question your self-narrative. Is it factual? Does it benefit you? Are there other possible interpretations of your experiences?
Replace negative thoughts with positive ones: Whenever you notice a negative thought, consciously replace it with a positive or neutral one.
While I don’t have any resounding successes to report yet, I can say that I’m less frustrated to understand why my son will spend an hour spinning his pen on his finger rather than do his 10 minutes of homework.