How Children Succeed

In order to homeschool Bryce, I've been reading a lot about education.  It's also making me think about what my priorities are for Bryce and how we will achieve our goals.  One of the best books I've read recently is "How Children Succeed" by Paul Tough.  Below are my notes that I took while reading.  That's how much I LOVED this book! 

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Success is an inclination to persist at a boring and often unrewarding task.  The ability to delay gratification. The tendency to follow through on a plan.
 

Adverse childhood experiences (ACE).  Higher the score, the more sick.  Overloading the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, especially in infancy and childhood, can have serious and long lasting negative effects. 
 

Stress affects ability to regulates thought.  The prefrontal cortex and executive function.  

 

Allostatic load is a physical measurement of stress.  Stress determines executive function. 

 

Early childhood that our brains and bodies are most sensitive to stress and trauma. 

 

Prefrontal cortex can be influenced well into adolescence and early childhood.  

 

High quality mothering can mitigate the effects of stress on a child.  

 

The effect of the environmental stressors like overcrowding to poverty to family turmoil was almost entirely eliminated by mothers responsiveness.  If your mom was sensitive to your emotional state, stress had almost no effect on your allostatic load. 

 

Babies whose parents responded readily and fully to their cries in the first few months were more independent at one and more self reliant in preschool.  Warm, sensitive parental care created a secure base from which a child could explore the world.  Early attachment create psychological effects that last a lifetime.  More self confident, more curious, better able to deal with setbacks.  Attachment at infancy can predict future school success. Early nurturing produced a resilience that acted as a protective buffer against stress.  

 

If the mom had an poor attachment to her mom, it will be that much harder for her to provide a nurturing attachment to her child.  But a parent CAN overcome this but they need help.  

 

Scientists have demonstrated that the most reliable way to produce an adult who is brave and curious and okind and prudent is to ensure that when he is an infant, his hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis functions well.  How do you do that?  First, protect him from serious trauma and chronic stress.  Then, even more important, you provide him with a secure, nurturing relationship with at least one parent and ideally two.  

 

Involves a lot of comforting, hugging, talking and reassuring.  Helping to calm down after a tantrum or a bad scare.  Want to teach the child how to manage their inflamed stress systems and help repair them to a resting system.  

 

This attachment may have a bigger influence on his character and in his ultimate happiness and success than anything parents can do.  

 

Must also teach children how to manage failure.  Must learn how to deal with and learn from your own failures.  Must teach them how to learn from failure, how to stare at failure with unblinking honesty, how to confront exactly why you messed up. If you can do that, you will do better the next time.  Must have the ability to overcome failure and learn from it. 

 

Affluent children never have to make a difficult decision or confront a real challenge entered the adult world competent but lost.  

 

Self discipline and character are better predictors of success then IQ.  

 

Motivation matters in the equation to be successful.

 

Conscientious - people high in conscientious get better grades, commit fewer crimes, stay married longer and live longer.  

 

Self control in childhood matters to success in adulthood. But more self control can mean less creative people.  

 

Character skills for success:  grit, self-control, zest, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism, curiosity. 

 

Build grit and self control through failure

By making rules, you sidestep the painful internal conflict between your desire for somethig and your willful determination to resist them. Before long,  rules and habits become automatic.  Metacognitive substitute.

 

Virtues are habits.  Habit and character are essentially the same thing. Some of us have good habits and other bad habits.  But that can change.  Habits allow you to exert yourself and not exhaust yourself mentally in order to do so.  

 

Surround students with character traits.  Work it into the lessons.  

 

Chess equals higher psychological and emotional intelligence or high level of executive function.  Higher order mental capacities. Requires cognitive flexibility and cognitive self control.  How to understand your mistakes and aware of your thought processes. Must look at games and figure out what you are doing wrong.  Learn from mistakes without beating themselves up and take responsibility.  

 

Babies need love and nurturing.  Teenagers need someone to take them seriously, believe in their abilities and challenge them.  

 

Behavior.  Slow down, examine their impulses and consider more productive solutions to their problems.  Students challenged to look at their own mistakes, examine them and think about how to do it differently.

 

Best way to improve is to play against the best, even if they take you apart.  

 

A lot of people with attention issues crave intense experiences and serious stimulation like chess.

 

Want vs choose.  Motivation vs volition. Crucial difference between wanting something and choosing it.  Reveal your choice through your behavior and determination.  Every action says This is Who I am.  

The dedication to a pursuit makes you feel productive.

 

Grit: self discipline wedded to a dedicated pursuit of a goal.  Liberating to be focused on one thing that they are passionate about.  

 

Flow: moments when a persons body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult or worthwhile.  Intense well being and control

 

US doesn't have a problem with college enrollment but with college completion.  US is second to last of 34 countries.  Leading the world in college drop outs.  

A college graduate can earn 83 % more then a high school diploma.  

Best predictor of college completion was high score GPA, not ACT scores, even if not from the best public school.  Who graduates from college isn't about who is the smartest but who has the motivation and perseverance to finish college.  

College success skills include non cognitive skills:  study skills, work habits, time management, help seeking behavior, social and academic problem solving skills. Need internal motivation and perseverance to make it through college.  

 

Many students don't have the non academic skills to succeed or the character skills required to succeed in college.  

 

Kids need resourcefulness, resilience, ambition, professionalism and integrity.  

 

Believe that the ACT measures how effective your education has been.  Not a good measure of intelligence.  

Noncognitive skills like resilience and resourcefulness and grit are highly predictive of success in college.  

 

In 1961, students spent 24 hrs a week studying.  1981, 20 hours a week and today, 14 hours a week. This can be an opportunity for success for a dedicated student who needs to catch up educationally. 

 

OneGoal program teaches kids how to be successful students.  Sit in the front row.  Pat attention and follow the lecture.  Introduce yourself to the teacher.  Ask questions.  Attend office hours.  Get tutoring.  Take advantage of math and writing labs.  Make 2 friends  in classes so you can study with them and ask questions. 

 

The idea of building grit and self control is that you get that through confronting real challenges and failure.

 

In affluent, high academic environments, no one ever fails.  

The lowest income children's biggest obstacle to success:  a home and community that create a high level of stress and the absence of a secure relationship with a caregiver that would allow a child to manage that stress.  

 

Hard to discuss these poverty issues because science is hard to understand, hard to talk about family dysfunction in low income homes and politically it is challenging.  The left would have to admit that family and character matters.  The right would have  to do more then just blame the family and nothing more.  

 

Author proposes new ways to support these really low income families with many interventions in the book.  He states that the current system is wildly broke, inefficient and doesn't work.  

 

Author said these kids can succeed but must have support.  All of us do.