Bright & Quirky Child Summit 2021: Tame The Overwhelm was a 5-day free online summit which aimed to help twice exceptional (2e) children - gifted children with ADHD, autism, learning differences like dyslexia, anxiety and/or depression. The conference featured 28 educators and psychologists who shared science-informed actionable strategies that promote social, emotional, and academic thriving even in tough times. The summit was hosted by Debbie Steinberg Kuntz, a licensed marriage and family therapist as well as the Founder of Bright & Quirky. Day 1 focused on taming stress, anxiety, and worry.
Effective Ways to Help Your Bright Child Reclaim Their Superpowers From Anxiety - Renee Jain, MAPP
Renee Jain, MAPP is the Founder and Chief Storyteller at GoZen! She is recognised as a pioneer in marrying technology and child psychology in a unique approach that nurtures the hearts and minds of kids. Through her writing, product invention and development, masterclasses for parents, and children’s advocacy, she works to build the emotional intelligence of kids, including resilience, empathy, kindness, and critical thinking. Tens of thousands of families and professionals testify to the unparalleled success of GoZen!'s programs. Originally a tech entrepreneur who has suffered with her own anxiety, Renee founded GoZen! to help a new generation of kids, parents and therapists.
As a child, Renee suffered from anxiety. She was worried about the house being robbed, about grades, about friends; anything that could be a worry was a worry for her. Her parents were loving and compassionate, and tried to reassure her, but did not know how to help. She tried to push out her worries, but pushed out all her good and bad emotions. She became a stoic robot pretending everything was okay, but did not know how to handle problems and challenges in her life. By her mid-twenties, she had a degree in finance and was working in technology, but started having severe panic attacks with shortness of breath. She went for therapy, and was shocked that she had not learnt these life skills as a child. Although she could not go back in time to heal herself or give herself advice directly, she decided to embark on a path of teaching these concepts to as many children as possible.
When a publisher first reached out to Renee, the publisher asked if she could write a book on getting rid of anxiety for children. She said no, because anxiety is part of humanity’s spectrum of emotions, not something fundamentally wrong with a person that should be gotten rid of. Instead, she wanted to write a book on transforming anxiety into courage, confidence, and resilience. Hence, she wrote the book 'Superpowered: Transform Anxiety into Courage, Confidence, and Resilience'. The premise of the book is that every child comes into the world whole, born with a set of superpowers that gives them the strength needed to transform anxiety. To explain why many children feel overwhelmed, chronically worried, and unable to cope with the challenges they face, the book explains that their superpowers got zapped as they went along in their lives. Yet, the superpowers are simply buried and latent inside of them. The book reminds children that they have these superpowers and can reactivate them.
Renee explained that the main reason why superpowers get zapped is because we get 'shoulded' on. We all have 'shoulds' in our life, such as from our parents and our culture. We have a set of beliefs that we 'should' be moving toward a particular goal or achieving something. Examples include being a particular size and weight, or going to an Ivy League school. 'Shoulds' are not inherently bad. Parents often give their children a 'should' out of love and good intention, wanting them to be happy and have fulfilling lives based on some raw talent they have expressed, such as, 'You should work to your full potential.' In addition, it is good to have a goal to work towards. However, what happens is that there is a disconnect. When the 'should' is some goal that we want children to meet, they then believe they need to meet that goal. At all the points along the way to the goal, they do not feel worthy; they are not good enough in this moment until they have achieved that goal. When they do reach the goal, that is no longer enough, and the goalpost starts to move. Instead of savouring that moment of success, they have to look at the next goal. Therefore, the long answer to the question regarding where the superpowers go is that children get 'shoulded' on and begin to 'should' on themselves, to the point where they feel like in order to be whole and worthy, they need to reach the next milestone.
Debbie noted that in the dominant medical model, anxiety is a diagnosis with specific signs and treatment plans. However, we can see interventions as a way of life and a form of self-love. Renee agreed that anxiety is often misunderstood as something bad that should be gotten rid of, causing parents of anxious children to feel upset. Although prolonged periods of chronic stress can lead to medical conditions, when we dig into the research around anxiety, there is actually a much more nuanced understanding of anxiety than such black-and-white thinking. By reconstructing an anxious experience to a challenge experience, one can use the stress to one’s advantage. The book includes interventions showing children how to change their relationship with their anxiety, transforming the anxiety rather than getting rid of it. In a challenge environment where one has to perform, such as giving a speech or taking a test, one can jump from feeling nervous to feeling excited, which is physiologically very similar. This can allow the person to become more creative, focused, and thereby perform better than if one were to remain anxious and also better than if one were to try to calm down. Parents need to have a more holistic understanding that every feeling has its purpose, and that suppressing feelings does not have any benefits.
Similar to the Academy Award-winning animated movie Inside Out, emotions are personified in Renee’s book. Worry is not portrayed as a demon or an evil character, because it is not. Instead, the character Wisty the Worrier is portrayed as a messenger within ourselves who is actually working to help and protect us. The book depicts different situations in which anxiety can be advantageous, allowing us to mobilise and get away from danger. Therefore, it is not about getting rid of or changing anxiety itself, but about changing our relationship with anxiety by creating a dialogue with it.
Yet, although worry can have a lot of benefits, worry can also over-react. Back in the day when we were out hunting and gathering, we had a need to protect ourselves via the fight, flight, or freeze response. However, when that response is activated, our mind exaggerates things, making us become inaccurate thinkers. There are many ways in which anxiety can cause cognitive distortions, such as by magnifying, minimising, or mind-reading things. For example, our brain might perceive a stick on the ground as a snake in order to protect us. Therefore, rather than trying to get from having negative thoughts to positive thoughts, we should try to get from having inaccurate thoughts to accurate thoughts.
Every single one of us can be anxious, especially now during the pandemic. Creating our own worry character and having an ongoing dialogue with it is a tried-and-true therapeutic technique that we can do on our own at any time. It is an empowering technique that young children, teenagers, and even adults are receptive to, as it enables us to talk to a part of ourselves instead of shutting it out. One of the exercises in Renee’s book is to get out a piece of paper and draw a character who could be our anxiety, whom we can then begin having a dialogue with. The character should be personified in some sort of human form with a name, so that we can interact with the character. The character can be Wisty the Worrier as suggested in the book, or it can be other creative ideas such as Mr Bossypants. When we talk to our worry, it is from the premise that this is a part of ourselves that we are speaking to. Moreover, there is a high likelihood that if anxiety is trying to talk to us, it is exaggerated or distorted. Hence, in our conversation back to anxiety, we can say, 'I know that you are trying to protect me, but things are not that bad, and I have got this.' Debbie added that evaluating our own cognitive distortions is a great way of being a self-scientist running experiments, which is a method she advocates for in Bright & Quirky.
Renee argued that one of the superpowers we come into the world with as young children is being present and mindful. However, as we get older and our brains start to mature, we begin to 'time travel' and think about the future. Many scientists believe that humans are the only species that can think critically about the future and make contingency plans. Our brain simulates different situations, figuring out different things that might happen and how we would react. Yet, because our power of presence gets zapped, we sometimes get stuck simulating and 'what-iffing'. 'What if I get stuck in traffic? What if I do not do well on this test? What if the pandemic never ends?'
Hence, the book presents several different methods to bring ourselves back into the present moment, and to also kickstart our brain's ability to create the contingency plans we need. One method is to help the simulator by writing out an if-then plan, such as, 'If I get stuck in traffic, then I will take another route.' Research shows that when we have already made a plan in advance, we are more likely to overcome our obstacle when we actually hit the obstacle. Moreover, we sometimes need that coping skills tool to actually be written out, literal, and right next to us. This is because we do not have to try to think about a plan in the moment when our brain is hijacked while we are in fight, flight, or freeze mode. For example, despite having years of pilot training, when Captain Sully first realised that the plane engines were impaled by birds, he pulled out the emergency checklist, and eventually successfully landed the plane in the Hudson River.
Debbie remarked that in some scenarios, we value people who have thought of every contingency, such as when we entrust our lives to pilots and surgeons. Yet, simulating and contingency planning can become an overused skill, where we are no longer present and mindful. She also observed that many gifted children with anxiety struggle with perfectionism.
Renee stated her wish for parents, educators, therapists, and children to re-evaluate our belief system around perfectionism. She speculated that most of society uses the term perfectionism as a misnomer, viewing it as a positive quality to be proud of. In fact, perfectionistic children are usually paralysed from fear. They are stuck instead of moving towards their goal; they want to be at the end result instead of being a work-in-progress; they want to be perfect already instead of going through the practice phase. As such, they are afraid to reveal their flaws and show up authentically as who they are. For instance, they may not want to participate in class because they cannot bear the possibility of saying something incorrect. This kind of perfectionism is unhealthy and should be put aside. Instead, we need to teach children about mastery. What we really want children to work towards is mastery - we want children to be gritty, go deep, focus, do deliberate practice, and have a hunger to learn.
With reference to Dr. Carol Dweck’s work on mindset, perfectionists often have a fixed mindset where they believe they came into this world as they are. Consequently, when labels such as 'smart' are given to or adopted by them, they spend most of their time putting up a performance trying to prove that the perception of them is true, but do so at the risk of losing it. They do not know what they would be or what would give them worth without that label. Debbie shared that diagnoses such as 'gifted' or 'anxiety' are types of labels, which she dislikes due to the expectations that go along with them. This is what motivates her to use the phrase 'bright and quirky' instead.
All blogposts on Bright & Quirky Child Summit 2021:
Day 1 Talk 4 A Quick, Shareable Overview of Twice Exceptional (2e) Kids - Dan Peters, PhD
Day 2 Talk 8 Understanding High IQ Kids With ADHD and Co-Occurring Diagnoses - Thomas E. Brown, PhD
Day 3 Talk 13 How to Know When It's Time to Change Schools or Homeschool - Colleen Kessler, MEd
Day 4 Talk 17 How to Help Bright Kids Avoid Autistic Burnout - Kieran Rose
Day 4 Talk 19 How Different Kinds of Minds Can Become Inventors and Engineers - Temple Grandin, PhD
Watch this space for more blogposts from the Bright & Quirky Child Summit 2021!