Learning confidence and adolescent development

Being able to plan and implement actions powerfully predicts success in life. It is especially important as an adolescent transitions to secondary school.

The ability to plan enables your adolescent to:

• organise what they need to do
• get things done in the right order
• make decisions and plans and carry them out.

Secondary school requires more planning by your adolescent. They use different textbooks and materials in different classrooms with different teachers. They often need to complete several different assignments at once and submit their work by different due dates.

Activities to help your adolescent to develop their planning skills:

• ask them to help you to plan an activity or holiday (what to pack and what to eat) using a checklist
• use photos or pictures to make a timeline, for example: things that need to be done when getting ready for school or bed
• shop, plan and cook together regularly or for a special occasion.

There is a developmental leap forward in adolescence.

Adolescents eventually learn that their first impulse is not always the best thing to do. They gain the ability to control impulses, prioritize, and reflect on the possible consequences of actions. It helps them to be able to anticipate and prepare for new learning that is challenging. It also helps them to deal with frustration in the early stages of learning new information. An important part of this is resisting distractions.

Impulse control also helps them to develop good friendships and collaborate well with others. In the long-term, impulse control is also protective against a range of risky behaviours later in life. These might include gambling, aggression, speeding, obesity, and addictions.

Activities to help your adolescent develop their impulse control:

• card games or any game that involves taking turns
• building or constructing something that requires a methodical approach (for example: Lego)
• playing sports where your adolescent has to understand and follow set rules
• discussing what makes a great conversationalist and friend (for example: listening and taking turns).

At times we want our concentration to have pinpoint accuracy. For example, when we struggle to understand a new idea or try to finish a maths task when a best friend has already completed their work.

At other times we need a broader awareness. A simple example of broader awareness is crossing the road. We need to be focused on the cars approaching us and also need to be alert for cars pulling over unexpectedly.

Concentration is hard to gain and easy to lose. Learning how to gain it, keep it and shift it appropriately is a major advantage for your adolescent in their learning. It is hard for an adolescent to succeed in school if their mind wanders during class time. This would mean that they can’t focus on what is to be learned.

Concentration is a skill like any other, and you can help your adolescent develop it. Anyone who has ever learned to play a musical instrument or juggle multiple demands in a day knows that we often improve after some practice. Concentration is a skill we can improve at.

Activities to help your adolescent to develop their ability to concentrate:

• discuss the main idea(s) of a radio or TV show you watch or listen to together
• card games (for example: Poker, Hearts and Bridge) or any game (for example: Dungeons and Dragons) that involves strategizing
• discuss what happened during the day and share detailed information.

One of the strongest predictors of your adolescent’s academic success is intelligence. One of the strongest indicators of their intelligence is their memory.

Memory is the basis of learning. You can’t use information that you can’t recall, and you can’t recall what you haven’t focused on.

Building your adolescent’s memory capacity is important. It increases their ability to hold key ideas in their mind, arrange, sort, link or process those ideas in different and creative ways. It helps them to recall key pieces of information when needed. As the complexity of information learned by your adolescent increases, memory is a vital skill for success.

You can support your adolescent to strengthen their memory. Use activities that include comparing, sequencing, summarizing, filtering out irrelevant information, reading and solving problems.

Activities to help your adolescent to develop their memory:

• create a family calendar – at the end of each month, print some photos highlights (or write them down) and stick them to a calendar that hangs on the wall. Encourage your adolescent to choose the events and help create the calendar
• make a timeline or portfolio that covers the key events from a year of their life (for example: their first or last year of primary school)
• at the end of the week ask them about the best or worst thing that happened to them
• learn a choreographed dance
• use a printed or online memory game
• practice cooking from memory rather than referring to a recipe.

As your adolescent’s brain develops, they are capable of more sophisticated levels of thinking.

The complexity of the ideas they learn and use increases during the transition from primary to secondary school. There will be times they will need to deal with confusion, ambiguity and the frustration that they haven’t quite understood a new concept yet.

A mindset is a set of beliefs and attitudes your adolescent has about themself as a learner.

Your adolescent has 3 main mindsets:

• An anxious mindset occurs when your adolescent feels the challenges they face are greater than the skills they have. If you have ever roller-skated, ridden a bike, or driven a car for the first time you may know this feeling.
• An avoidant mindset occurs when the skills your adolescent has are greater than the challenges they are faced with. If you have ever felt that a task is too easy for you or that your skills are not being called upon, you may know this feeling.
• A resilient mindset is the learning sweet spot. This is where your adolescent feels a balance between the challenges they are facing and the skills they have to meet them. It is where they learn and perform best.

No one spends all of their time in a resilient mindset; we all have some anxious and avoidant moments. If your adolescent spends too much time in an anxious mindset they will worry unnecessarily and find it hard to concentrate. If your adolescent spends too much time in an avoidant mindset, they will become uninterested and lose motivation.

The resilient mindset is where they can learn new ideas and overcome difficulties and challenges. It is a little like the childhood story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, not too hot, not too cold, but just right.

The importance of a resilient mindset:

• Them to tell you about situations where they have shown resilience or overcome challenges. For example: you could discuss a time when they completed an assignment, cooked a meal, or learned a new song or dance. You may highlight that they have been able to find classes and meet new people at their new school. You may want to model this for them first, by telling stories about them that highlight times they have shown a resilient mindset.
• You could help them to learn the signs that they are in either an anxious or avoidant mindset. You can also encourage them to find ways to motivate themselves to face a challenge. The following section provides some useful strategies to increase motivation. This can in turn help them get into a resilient mindset.

The neurochemical called dopamine plays an important role in motivation. It gives your adolescent that pumped up ‘I-can-take-on-the-world’ feeling. When their levels of dopamine decrease, they feel listless and sluggish.

Early teenagers have lower levels of dopamine than children do. They are often harder to motivate. The things they found motivating when they were younger no longer engage or interest them as much. You might notice that they are less interested in pleasing you or hanging out with you.

It gets more complicated because they become incredibly sensitively attuned to what their peers might think of them. Anxiety and fear can sabotage motivation. The neurochemicals associated with these feelings are adrenaline and cortisol.

Motivated vs unmotivated

The most important thing to know is that not feeling motivated hasn’t really got much to do with motivation. It has more to do with feeling anxious and worried. In fact, this is a useful formula to keep in mind: fear of failure + worry = loss of motivation.

Motivation has more to do with your adolescent overcoming their fears than anything else. During the transition years, it feels much easier not to attempt something rather than to risk failing. To make matters worse, their fears loom larger if they try to avoid them.

You can help your adolescent increase their dopamine and increase motivation by:

• playing games with fun challenges
• using humour to make them laugh
• doing funny quizzes and puzzles
• giving positive feedback
• supporting them to do activities that involve rhythmic movement such as dancing, swimming, badminton, table tennis and drumming.

Increasing motivation

The transition years are a time when your adolescent learns more about themselves and their capabilities. When we focus on what they can do and what they are interested in, we build their sense of competence and increase the likelihood of success.

There are several ways this knowledge can benefit your child:

• It can help them to overcome a fear of failure. Success during the transition years and in life generally, is not about being good at everything. Success is about discovering what you are good at, developing those strengths and applying them to other areas where possible.
• It can help them to stay motivated if they aren't worried about excelling in every area. It is good to know that you can still be smart and successful without being immediately successful in everything they try.
• Being aware of what you enjoy learning about and how you enjoy learning can help you to remain confident and motivated.
• It can help you to plan activities that get them excited about learning – parents are powerful teachers of their children. When you focus on activities that tap into their current interests, you are likely to get greater engagement and enjoyment. This can build into momentum to develop other areas of interest.

Success creates success. The fastest way to help children to become passionate about learning is to celebrate their early attempts and successes.