Helping kids with one simple question

Most of us have at least one good story reminding us that our mom knew something we should commit to memory — some lesson that would stand the test of time. What was my story?

My brother was in sixth grade at the time and had frequent stomachaches. When my mom took him to the pediatrician, the doctor suggested my parents make an appointment with a psychologist. My parents didn’t understand why, but they trusted their pediatrician, so my parents and brother spoke with the psychologist.

What did my mom learn $25 later — “the best $25 I ever spent” —she would routinely say in later years.

My brother was feeling too much pressure from my parents. They needed to stop asking him what he missed on his tests that he mostly aced and also how the other top students in the class did.

Every time my mother shared the story of the visit to the psychologist, she would hang her head in shame. She was unaware of the pressure she had created until the psychologist entered the picture. My response to my mom was always, “Look how you self-corrected.”

To my parents’ credit, they changed their style and never asked those questions again. My brother’s stomach aches went away. We also benefited from their revised parenting style.

This story came back to me because childhood anxiety is way too prevalent. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that anxiety reaches 25% of children between the ages of 13 and 18 years old. For very young children, the data doesn’t look much better. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 6 children (17%) has a diagnosed mental or behavioral disorder.

The problem is genuine and not going away.

My mom’s story of her best $25 spent had me thinking. At the heart of her lesson was the need to reduce my brother’s pressure. I have since translated this question into the “So what” question for my kids.

So what if you don’t get everything right?

The beauty of this question is that it works for all age groups, even my 30-something children.

So what if you are not a production machine?

So what if you take time off to figure out the next steps?

So what if your creativity engine is taking a break?

The consequence of pushing ourselves so hard is significant. For someone young, it manifests in a stomachache. When we’re older, the consequences are bigger. We might end up focusing more on the pace than the direction. We might be moving so fast and without proper consideration that we arrive at a place we don’t want to be.

The notion of fostering a more relaxed learning style was at the heart of what my favorite teacher in college practiced. The class was thermodynamics, which I wasn’t even sure I’d pass. The teacher was known throughout the university as “Crazy Joe.”

What earned him that name?

It was his unorthodox approach. He believed that it didn’t matter when you learned the material. It only mattered that you learned thermodynamics sometime during the semester. He reasoned that was how we actually learn — not linearly but in unpredictable spurts.

Because of this view of learning, Crazy Joe said that if we got “C’s” on his tests throughout the semester and did well on the final, he would take that to mean that the knowledge finally kicked in and grade us based on our final.

It was his way of showing that Crazy Joe cared that we learn, not when.

This was precisely what happened to me. Somewhere along the way, I understood the material, and my C’s were overridden by my “A” on the final.

I think “Crazy Joe” was actually “Brilliant Joe.” He gave me permission to process my world naturally and organically.

I hope to help my children understand why “Crazy Joe” was spot on, and I hope the question, “So what?” sets them on that path.

If so, it won’t be a story of the best $25 I spent, but maybe the best question I ever asked within my family.

Jill Ebstein is the editor of the “At My Pace” series of books and the founder of Sized Right Marketing, a consulting firm. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.