Welcome to Conscious Clips on our time together.
Today we're going to talk about the frontal lobes of the brain and how it relates to
discipline and
guidance. The frontal lobes are the
CEO of the brain, it's the boss of the brain, it's the executive of the brain
and thus it gives us the Executive Skills. This part of the brain is right
behind our forehead
and so these are our frontal lobes. Specifically we're going to talk about
the prefrontal lobes. Now I run Loving Guidance so I am a boss,
so I can relate to these skills a great deal. Now
they come in two categories, basically the frontal lobe
and these skills called Executive Skills have two main
parts to them. One is to decide what to do,
out of all the many things you could do, and how to organize and plan that so you
can achieve it.
And at the same time you've got to manage your emotions so you don't get sidetracked and
overwhelmed. Often I hear people come up to me and say
"Oh, you need a Sophie series. You need a Sophie series for the little kids like a
Schubert series or you need to make this or you need to write a book about
this."
And I'm so overwhelmed I'm like "Yeah right."
So, my frontal lobes can't handle that information.
So let's go and break these two up. There's Executive Skills that have to do
with
thinking and there's Executive Skills that have to do
with managing our emotions. So the thinking
executive skills include such things as planning. You've got to plan what you want to do.
Organization, how are you going to get the resources there to do this. Time
management, what is your time line.
Working memory you've got to remember who's doing what part
of things. And self-monitoring along the way, you've got to say "How am I doing? How am I doing?
How am I doing?"
Now think about this in terms of young children. How
able are they to plan at certain ages. How can they organize their materials.
How do they know how long something is going to take. How many children wait
to the last minute
before making a book report that they needed to start reading two weeks ago.
And working memory, can they remember to take their book to school. Did they take,
did they even know what the assignment was,
and monitoring themselves. So these
skills that we call Executive Skills take
two decades to develop and they develop
very slowly over time. Our job as a parent or teacher
is to be the child frontal lobes
while their's is developing. So just with these thinking skills
how can we help a child plan, organize, manage their time,
remember what they need to take care of and evaluate themselves.
Constantly these are things we must help children do.
Sometimes we need to make a checklist for our older children this is what you need
to have done
before you go to bed. We have visuals so children know what to do, what to expect
we have reminders, remember this.
We constantly must be the child's surrogate frontal lobes.
Now imagine what happens if you've got a problem in one of these areas yourself.
You have a problem in planning, you have a problem in organization,
you have a problem in time management. If you are missing these skills
it's going to be impossible to help your child develop them.
So, Conscious Discipline is a frontal lobe
skill development program. It helps us develop the skills we need
so we can help children develop the skills they need.
The second set of these Executive Skills, which is the big name for all the skills
the frontal lobe does
besides the thinking ones we just talked about, are the behavioral or emotional skills.
The frontal lobes allow us to have impulse control.
It allows us to regulate our emotions so we just don't get so overwhelmed or so
angry and sidetracked.
It allows us to have flexibility to shift from one thought to the next thought,
in essence to multitask. It allows us to
have task initiation to start a project
and persistence, despite obstacles, to finish it.
Again as a CEO or the boss of a company I can tell you
that there's times where it's hard for me, I start a project and I don't finish it
because there's so many obstacles.
Or I'm focused on one project and eight projects need my attention
and I get so overwhelmed that my emotions kind of stop the process again.
So these Executive Skills as you can see
really are the skills of a CEO of our brain
and even though they come from this area called the frontal lobe
they integrate with every area of the brain, just like me as the CEO.
I interact with every person who works with me so that I know what's going on
in each phase.
Every area of the frontal lobe is engaged with every other area of the brain.
Now think about this in terms of what we need to do with children.
If children take two decades for them to develop
impulse control, two decades for them to regulate their emotions,
two decades for them to start a task and finish it,
we still again have to be the child's frontal lobe
as these develop. We must model these,
and again Conscious Discipline is the program that teaches you
how to access, develop, strengthen
your frontal lobes so in turn you can help develop the frontal lobes
of your children. Just think about all the Executive Skills
required in completing homework for children.
First, they have to organize their materials.
They have to manage their time, they have to know if I've got to start at seven so
I'll be done at eight.
They need to plan what to do first and what to do second.
They have to monitor themselves all the way through it,
and they have to remember what's supposed to be done, what they've
completed and what they haven't completed.
At the same time they've got to manage their emotions because they don't
understand the math.
They've got to regulate their impulse control because they'd much rather
watch TV
or maybe get a snack or go outside and play with friends, and they also then
have to kind of multitask. Well I've got a little bit from English and a little bit
over here from math
I got this, and they must be able to start this
process and end it despite
all the obstacles that happen in the middle, including a 2-year-old brother
sticking gum to their pants.
So, this is a huge problem and you can see why it's such an aggravation for
parents
because we say "Go do your homework" and leave them to it
it's impossible for children to develop all these skills. We must constantly prompt,
cue, assist, help them, give them visuals, structure the environment.
"You will do your homework from seven to eight. Here's the one you will start with
first.
Here's what you will do first. You need to take some breaks.
Let's calm down. You can do it." We help them regulate their emotions
when they run into obstacles, and the problem with the frontal lobes
is they are labor-intensive.
They require an adult right there with the child
constantly for their development. And one of the problems in our society now is that
we're so busy,
people are working so long, everyone is so busy we don't have time to put in
what it takes for frontal lobe development.
Conscious Discipline is a frontal lobe development program.
Most of what we call discipline problems are simply
undeveloped, immature
Executive Skills. Conscious Discipline will help you
and your children be successful as they develop through life
the skills necessary to be successful all through life.
Until next time, I wish you well.