Show #242 – Veteran Educator Rod Soper on Children and Resilience

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And on this week’s show!

Another installment of our parents and kids series during these few weeks and it’s another super helpful show. Do you ever doubt yourself as a parent or carer? If the answer is ‘oh yeah I do sometimes!’ then enter today’s guest: Rod Soper is deeply committed to increasing the wellbeing of every child through saturating their lives with wellness. Rod is a veteran educator, having served as a classroom teacher and school principal for more than twenty years. Currently, Rod heads up Personhood360 and is the principal consultant with Thinkersinq Consulting. He is also the chief investigator of The Playing with Gratitude research Project, a wellness project supporting change in about 3000 Australian children, families, and teachers. 

All parents and carers want to contribute to the development of resilience in children as they grow, helping them with good self regulation skills, perseverance, courage, and also developing their ability to move through big emotions and get themselves unstuck when they experience an emotionally or physically challenging situation. Today’s show is packed with the kinds of tips and things to say in different situations that you will absolutely want a notepad and pen for so pour a cuppa, take it in and share with a friend who might want some support raising their kids. The resources we talked about can be found below.

Questions I asked Rod:

• What led you to a career in education? 
• What were some of your biggest lessons as a teacher? School Principal? 
• And what led you to want to focus on EL? 
• What have you seen as some of the biggest differences that we can make as parents and carers in a child’s life as they grow? 
• We all want our kids to grow to be resilient, but what can we miss if we focus too much on resilience/toughness/can-do, and not enough on wellbeing? 
• So you see a child have a tough time, say, in a sporting situation – maybe they’re upset they lost/are losing a match/game, maybe their team mate blamed them for doing something wrong and they’re really down – how do we see them, meet them where they are, and also have these experiences help build resilience? 
• Can you share some ways we can build healthy resilience in our kids that also help them feel good about themselves, comfy in their skin/happy, rather than braving life because they ‘think they have to or won’t be loved/will be seen as weak’ etc? Maybe we could look at 0-7 7-13 and teen years examples to span all ages of childhood? 
• How important is it for us to model well being? What are some healthy ways we can do that around our kids? 
• Let’s talk about self regulation and some of the ways we can support the development of this, as well as the difference between self regulation and self control? 
• Discipline with our kids: We can feel a bit lost these days knowing how to do it right, and I’ve seen this backfire where there’s no discipline or boundaries because parents want their kids to be happy/peace at home – how do we do healthy boundaries without instilling fear/shame that they’re not good enough/being raised as needs be to grow up competent humans? 
• How important is fostering gratitude in our kids? Ways to do it? 
• Grit – how much does grit develop simply through life experience vs us being able to teach it? 

Other helpful links:

Wellbeing Ideas for children Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1938172416334235

Rod’s book “The Great Gratitude Surprise”

Kool Kids Program: https://www.mq.edu.au/research/research-centres-groups-and-facilities/healthy-people/centres/centre-for-emotional-health-ceh/centre-for-emotional-health-clinic/programs-for-children-and-teenagers/online-treatment-accordions/cool-kids-online

The Great Gratitude Surprise: https://playingwithgratitude.com/the-great-gratitude-surprise/

You can also find Thinkersinq on Instagram @thinkersinq and Facebook

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Enjoy the show,