Joe Bruzzese (21 page)

Soliciting participation and support for the home team takes time and ongoing effort. The “picture, plan, and promote” strategy can be a powerful way to bring family members together in a way that benefits everyone.

Picture
. Take five minutes to recall the events that have brought your family together in meaningful ways. Sharing a meal, enjoying a movie, and taking family trips garner the top spots on many lists.

Plan
. Find the family calendar and look for opportunities to designate as family time. Plotting a date on the calendar increases the possibility of going to the beach, sharing a picnic, or taking a weekend excursion tenfold.

Promote
. If spending time together as a family has not been a regular part of the weekly routine, there may be some apprehension or, in some cases, strong opposition to planned family gatherings. By including everyone in the planning process, family time becomes a group effort in which everyone has something invested.

Using the “picture, plan, and promote” strategy creates an initial boost of energy and motivation among family members that can launch the home team forward in September. But it can be more difficult to maintain excitement over the long haul.

It takes ongoing effort to sustain momentum through consistent communication among family members. The weekly check-in is a great routine to begin at the start of the school year. When families become accustomed to regular and frequent communication, they can move beyond the scheduled approach that a weekly check-in promotes. Varying the venue also helps families come together. Search for new and engaging activities and environments for your family to explore this year that will bring new life to family gatherings and, above all, keep fun at the heart of your interactions.

If you like more structure and appreciate the appeal of a formal calendar of events, then you may find the charting strategy more useful. The goal of this activity is to predict when family members will come together so that the time you share is more meaningful. Anticipating moments of shared time gives you a wonderful opportunity to focus on the interactions you want to have rather than waiting for those moments to arrive and then reacting to whatever shows up.

On a standard sheet of lined paper, create a chart with four columns. From left to right, label the columns Daily, Weekly, Quarterly, and Annually.

Fill the chart with events or activities that will involve the whole family. Begin with the Daily and Weekly columns, then move across the page as ideas come to mind. After you have exhausted the list of activities that involve everyone, turn to activities that only a few family members might take part in (a trip to the movie theater or a lunch together could provide the ideal setting for you and your child to connect, separate from the whole family). Sharing special time with a child or spouse can be just as important to keeping the family together as a whole-family experience.

Consider planning a mini-vacation or long weekend once a quarter. These two-to-three-day excursions can be as basic as a trip to your local camping area or a short visit to see extended family members. In the “Annually” column include birthdays—both those of your immediate family and any other birthdays that your family celebrates with either close friends or extended family members. Holidays belong in this column. Are you planning to stay at home or travel for any of the major holidays on your calendar? Anticipating these extended family times can help you start coordinating a few planned activities that will bring everyone together. Finally, add an extended trip to the list of annual family events, if possible. As with the mini-vacations, don't feel compelled to plan a grand, multi-week adventure that leaves your bank account depleted for months. The goal in planning your trip is to create a time that brings everyone together to share and appreciate each other.

Staying connected throughout the middle school years contributes significantly to your child's growth as a productive and healthy adolescent. Regular conversations with you and the members of your support team create a web of security that children need in order to feel comfortable as they take risks and explore the world.

It is important for middle school parents to create and communicate a set of high expectations for your child's ongoing development. But be careful not to confuse high expectations with unrealistic goals that have little to no hope of being realized. High expectations clearly articulate the boundaries that you believe to be achievable in your child's life. The challenge comes in trying to accurately and objectively determine what is appropriate for your child, given his current level of development. In the area of academic achievement, parents can easily overload their child with advanced classes and optional electives that push the child beyond the limit of what's possible. What a parent believes to be realistic and what an adolescent perceives as realistic can differ dramatically. The following story helps to illustrate this point.

Having become accustomed to daughter Carey's steady progress of A's and B's in elementary school, her parents registered her for the honors courses in middle school. Their unstated expectation was that Carey's level of achievement would remain on par with her past performance. After the first few weeks of school, Carey found herself overwhelmed with assignments and anxiety over learning the course content. The B's and C's on Carey's first report card reflected her quarter-long struggle to achieve. Even though her effort had remained high, the rigor of the coursework had increased. The argument that followed ended with an ultimatum from Carey's parents: “Things had better change, or else.”

Although the elementary school years create the foundation for a child's achievement, parents should be careful when scheduling classes for the first middle school year. Typically the workload of upper elementary school courses won't compare to a full slate of classes at the middle school level. Before you schedule fall classes, have a conversation with your child about the challenges that lie ahead. It's part of your coaching role to encourage your child to take a path that will stretch his ability to learn and grow. As the discussion unfolds, don't forget to ask your child, “What do
you think? Does this list of classes sound too challenging?” rather than making the assumption that you and you alone know what's best. Over the preceding six to seven years of school your child has also developed an acute sense of what “challenging” looks like with respect to instruction and assignments. Co-creating the year's class schedule brings two added benefits. First, your child will appreciate being included in decisions that affect his life. Second, by sharing responsibility for course planning you forge a stronger bond with your child that will get you through some of the difficult times that lie ahead.

If Carey and her parents had taken a few moments to create a clear set of expectations, they might have avoided an argument later. Admittedly, it's tough to determine an appropriate level of challenge that will stretch a child without subsequently diminishing her zeal for exploring the unknown—but you'll find it well worth the effort.

Creating goals takes practice. We are not born with the innate ability to create a direct path toward achievement. Goal setting challenges us to focus on what we really want and then plot a path that will eventually lead us there. It's a rare child who can clearly state what she wants to achieve when it comes to the grades on her report card. The right answer seems to be, “All A's.” But when asked, most adolescents admit that getting straight A's is what their
parents
want to hear. The reality of what shows up on the report card may be dramatically different. So how do parents and kids come together to talk about what's realistic while still promoting a healthy level of challenge?

The first step may be to talk about areas of challenge. Does your child's class schedule present a grim picture of endless homework? Perhaps the sheer number of classes seems like an overwhelming responsibility. What about the after-school schedule of activities? Will the three-days-a-week practice schedule leave time
for a full night of homework as well as time to talk with friends? Without the prior experience of managing multiple schedules and expectations, kids can become anxious about the host of potential unknowns. It's vital that you help your child accurately gauge where and when challenges will occur. Begin by creating a list that focuses on two to three areas of challenge for the coming year. Ask your child for her ideas as you co-create the list. Common items for this list are having the time to finish all homework, spending time with friends, getting enough sleep, staying healthy, and fulfilling extracurricular responsibilities.

With a clearer picture of the difficulties in mind, turn your discussion to past achievements and challenges. The elementary school years provide a good primer for what lies ahead. Even though your child may not have had the challenge of managing multiple teacher expectations, she undoubtedly studied a host of different topics that required a significant amount of homework. Do you recall how much homework time the average night included? Tracking homework hours during the elementary years will provide you and your child with a clearer idea of what to expect when the middle school homework begins to arrive. Middle school classes each typically average a minimum of thirty minutes a night of homework. A quick calculation tells you that the typical seven period schedule could easily result in three and a half hours of work each evening! Would a jump in homework time push your child past the point of being able to focus and create quality assignments? If so, you should take the opportunity to share your thoughts about the preceding years and guide your child to reduce his course load to a level that may be more in tune with his current ability. It can be difficult for a child of middle school age to find the right balance between taking on too much and near boredom.

Creating a manageable academic schedule is one slice, albeit a significant one, of a middle schooler's life. Extracurricular schedules and socializing with friends also account for a fair amount of time each week. Most kids at this age have difficulty learning how
to manage multiple schedules and responsibilities. Throughout elementary school you may have taken responsibility for managing your child's schedule. The transition to middle school, though, begins a new era. Your child and most of the other adults in his life will want to shift the responsibility out of your hands. As an intermediate step to giving up complete control, consider donning a coaching hat, and with it a slightly different role.

As a coach you still assume great responsibility for teaching your child. Completing homework, managing time, and maintaining friendships all require ongoing education that you can provide. In a coaching role, however, you hand over responsibility to your child when it comes time to put his new skills into action. Guiding your child through the goal-setting process is a wonderful way to step into your new coaching role.

By creating a realistic set of goals that focus on action-oriented objectives, you and your child can bring balance to his schedule as well as his emotional state. A child who is accustomed to focusing in short bursts of time may well struggle with looking forward toward potential goals. Start small, with goals that can be achieved in a short time period (one to two days). Your role as a coach can be integral in helping your child create and achieve a realistic set of goals leading to long-term success during the middle school years.

The achievement of
action-oriented
goals depends entirely on the effort of the person trying to achieve the goals. The achievement of
outcome-based
goals often depends on a host of variables, many of which are not under the direct control of the goal seeker. In the case of the outcome-based goal in the pair of examples that follow, the math teacher ultimately decides which questions appear on tests, the project requirements, and the value of nightly homework assignments, all of which determine a student's final grade.

Action-oriented goal:
I want to improve my current grade in math.

Outcome-based goal:
I want an A in math.

With a focus on keeping effort at the core of the goals your child creates, try the following seven-day goal-setting strategy.

Step One:
Work with your middle schooler to create an action-oriented goal that can be achieved in the next seven days. Record it on a piece of paper with the title, “My goal for the next seven days.” A seven-day period is short enough for adolescents to visualize and allows them enough time to demonstrate progress through specific actions. One example of an action-oriented goal is, “I want to improve my test grades.” But working with your child means that you ask questions and wait for answers—not the other way around.

Step Two:
Ask your middle schooler, “What is one thing you can do today that would help you to achieve your goal?” and have her record the answer on the goal-setting paper. With their focus on
today
, most adolescents immediately move into an action mind-set: “If I can do one thing today, I am one step closer to achieving my goal.” Put one foot in front of the other—forward movement creates momentum.

Step Three:
Follow up the previous question by asking, “What can you do tomorrow that would help you to achieve your goal?” As in the preceding steps, continue to add responses to the goal-setting paper. Focusing on tomorrow gives your child the opportunity to think about the future. Although tomorrow doesn't seem far away to most adults, many teens don't have a clue about what is going to happen in the next twenty-four hours. Thinking about what's next (like completing the test study guide) automatically gives the brain a focus point. When a seed has been planted, the adolescent
brain naturally begins to take action to nurture the seed's growth. Translation:
your middle schooler's brain will take action even if his physical body does not
. Keep this strategy in mind for other ideas you would like your middle schooler to consider.