The Dr Jo Show

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Unknown
What's the most important thing you need to know when parenting a 10 to 14 year old? And that's today on the Doctor Joe Show.

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Unknown
before we dive in, I just want to ask you guys to hit the subscribe button.

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Unknown
It helps this video reach more people. And I really need your help with that. So thank you so much for, watching today, but also for, supporting this channel and yeah, anything you can do to help it grow. I would be very, very grateful. So today we're talking about what is the one thing you have to do when parenting a 10 to 14 year old?

00:00:30:06 - 00:00:45:21
Unknown
You guys know I'm not a parenting expert, but I have got five kids aged between 5 and 14 and over the last decade, I have spent so much time scouring over books and research just to help me become a better mom. I never thought that I'd be sharing this kind of content with other people, but I just didn't want to mess up my own kids.

00:00:45:21 - 00:01:01:03
Unknown
And so I being a researcher, it meant that, you know, I really tried to look for things that are going to help my kids to thrive. I think all of us start with that. We want our children to thrive. I'm sure that's why you're here on this channel, because you care about your kids. You love your kids. And that's a good starting point, isn't that?

00:01:01:05 - 00:01:24:21
Unknown
The thing is, in the baby years, when they toddlers, and when they're babies, it's so hands on. You have to kind of do everything for them, and you have to be so present and around because they're babies and they're so dependent on you, they're just literally looking to you for everything. And when kids start to become a bit more independent, so around the age of nine, 10 to 14, it's typically been called now the tween stage, the stage between being a kid and a teenager.

00:01:24:23 - 00:01:43:10
Unknown
And often that's when parents kind of take a step back because they go, okay, my kid can dress themselves, they can feed themselves, they can't drive themselves to school. But other than being a taxi driver, I probably don't need to do too much with my children because, you know, they're at that pretty happy phase of life before becoming the moody teenager that everybody tells us they're going to become.

00:01:43:12 - 00:01:59:17
Unknown
Anyway, I had been doing, I guess, a lot of thinking about that over the years, especially when my eldest daughter was approaching the age of ten and I started, thinking about this phase of her life and what should I be doing as a parent in that phase? And a lot of parents will step back at that phase.

00:01:59:17 - 00:02:19:22
Unknown
And it might be when they take on a new job, they take on more hours at work, or they start, a new, study or a new hobby. But something that I found in the literature was that that's precisely at the time when parents shouldn't take a step back, but they actually have to be involved, not in the same hands on way you are when they're a baby or a toddler, but in a different way.

00:02:19:24 - 00:02:41:09
Unknown
And I was particularly influenced by the research by Doctor Peter Benson, who founded the Research Institute. Now, he tragically died in 2011, but before he died in the years before he died, one of the things that he really pushed, in fact, the main idea he campaigned for was this idea of parents between the age of 10 to 14, helping uncover their child's spark.

00:02:41:11 - 00:03:05:17
Unknown
And so, you know, he saw this season before they became teenagers, as being critical to the child, putting down roots and discovering parts or aspects or even just one thing in their life that really made them feel fully alive. And he said that the job of a parent between the ages of 10 to 14 is to help their child find that spark or spark, because they're not going to be able to just find it on their own.

00:03:05:19 - 00:03:26:13
Unknown
In developing this theory about the importance of finding your child's spark, Doctor Peter Benson did a number of surveys and studies with young people. And what he found was fascinating. He found that if you ask children, you know, what is the thing that gives your heart joy? What is the activity or, interest that makes you feel most fully alive?

00:03:26:15 - 00:03:46:07
Unknown
65% of children could name it. They just knew that. They could tell you. This is the thing I really love to do. I love singing or I love drawing, I love animals 25% of children needed an adult to kind of help them along, to try and work out what their spark was, but when an adult prompted them, they were able to determine what their spark was.

00:03:46:13 - 00:04:11:13
Unknown
And then 10% of children actually had more than one spark when they were asked about this. So this tells you something that children, you know, 10 to 14 year olds, they do have a sense of what they like to do. And being asked that question and having that conversation with them is a really proactive way, I guess, to, sort of get a bit further along in terms of designing how they live their week, what they do with their time, and what you do as a parent to support them.

00:04:11:13 - 00:04:22:11
Unknown
Doctor Peter Benson talks about the fact that for something to be a spark, it doesn't just have to be a skill or talent that suddenly is probably the number one category that we think of when we think of a skill or a talent.

00:04:22:11 - 00:04:38:13
Unknown
We think they're a really good soccer player. Maybe they're a really good cook. Or maybe, they're really interested in science and Stem. You know, we think of skill or talent as being the main thing about spark. But he also says there's two other types of categories that parents have to look out for. One is a commitment.

00:04:38:13 - 00:04:45:18
Unknown
So he says, you know, for example, to protecting the natural world or to social justice or, to looking after people

00:04:45:18 - 00:05:00:24
Unknown
A third category he talks about is equality of character. So, you know, such as empathy or being the person that others will go to talk to for advice. Courageous. Being someone who is bold and, is is a path breaker, an innovator.

00:05:00:24 - 00:05:32:12
Unknown
So, you know, when you're thinking about what your spark your child might have, don't just think about skill. Italian could be one of these other two things. It could be, a commitment to something or a quality that they innately possess. And then the other thing that Doctor Peter Benson says is that if parents don't identify spark and invest in spark, then the spark can actually be extinguished over time that kids who don't have parents that I sort of really focused on developing this with them, it can actually lead to the spark sort of going out.

00:05:32:12 - 00:05:51:12
Unknown
And then by the time they're a teenager, they really, don't have that strong interest or desire. It's sort of like a childhood dream that they once had, but then they don't pursue. And, you know, I think that for me is something I've seen a little bit in our own family's journey. So when my eldest daughter was ten, I guess I was actively thinking about spark.

00:05:51:12 - 00:06:13:19
Unknown
I think she was, at the end of year four. And, you know, we were thinking, okay, so she's pretty good at sport. She also loves to sing and to dance. We hadn't done a whole lot of extracurricular because I think there's a danger sometimes when we think about this pressure to find the spark that we just then go on the extracurricular merry go round and our kids a hyper scheduled, and they're going from activity to activity to activity because we're trying to find the spark.

00:06:13:20 - 00:06:29:14
Unknown
Actually, I think what we, what we should be doing is sort of pulling it back and, and just really trying to get to know our child in those years between, say, three and nine, really like watch them, observe them, spend time with them and see what they like to do. And with my eldest daughter, she loved creative play.

00:06:29:16 - 00:06:46:00
Unknown
She was always doing these imaginative dress up games. She also liked nature. She liked being outside. She I remember the first time I took him to work in the city, she was very struck by the fact that some people were homeless. And so that led to her doing stalls in the local area to try and raise money, because she wanted to do something about that.

00:06:46:00 - 00:07:00:00
Unknown
So she had a lot of different sparks, I guess, and we didn't know which one was going to be the one that really stuck with her. My husband around this time thought it would be good to take a rock climbing, because that was something that he liked to do. So they would go to bouldering gyms and try climbs together.

00:07:00:00 - 00:07:16:21
Unknown
And we did notice that when she came home from climbing, she was so alive and happy. She loved doing it with her dad, and it could have been that it was just something that she did with a dad, and that's why she liked it. But it could also have been because she just was, innately driven by that desire to work out the problem in the climb and to get up the wall.

00:07:16:21 - 00:07:36:18
Unknown
cut that long story short, she, I guess around the age of, ten, 11 started to say to me, mom, I really want to pursue rock climbing. I really love it, and I want to go to this. She looked at the gym like there was a gym in Thebarton called ABC, and she'd been going more locally, to Clovelly Park and, you know, and that's where she and my husband had been going.

00:07:36:23 - 00:07:51:20
Unknown
But she wanted to go to this gym further away. And, you know, she had a pitch for me when she was about 11 and she said, look, I'm serious about climbing. I want to I want to go here because it's the best place in South Australia. And so at that point, I guess I was thinking, oh, this is so far away.

00:07:51:20 - 00:08:07:24
Unknown
We've already got, four kids. This is expensive. And how are we going to do this on a school night? But, you know, I had read about Doctor Vincent's concept of spark, and I thought, well, this is the thing that she's really asking of me. And in fact, at the start of year five, her school teacher had done this kind of goal setting thing for the year.

00:08:07:24 - 00:08:21:04
Unknown
And I knew that she'd written in that, that her goal was to go to the Olympics and become a climber. And so all of that was there. And I guess when a child comes to you and they've got this kind of spark where they don't put it in the language of spark, it's more like, mom, I really want to do this thing.

00:08:21:06 - 00:08:34:13
Unknown
You sort of have to go through a bit of a process of, okay, so what else are they doing? What else have we invested in, committed to with this child? And is this perhaps the thing that really drives them and they really want to do. And you know, with her we hadn't got her in a lot of extracurriculars.

00:08:34:13 - 00:08:52:09
Unknown
She wasn't learning a musical instrument. She did play soccer as part of her school sport. And there wasn't really a whole lot else that we were investing in. So we decided to do this. We decided to make the effort to put it into a rock climbing club and to do the driving, and and it would be late nights, twice a week and all of that.

00:08:52:09 - 00:09:06:17
Unknown
And then, you know, through doing that, she actually did really well in the state comps. And then the following year was able to go to nationals. And it so happened that normally that would be the kind of thing my husband would take the kids to. He would take them to nationals because I would stay with the little ones at home.

00:09:06:17 - 00:09:22:14
Unknown
But he was doing Melbourne Design Week, so it fell on me to take her to nationals and my brother flew in to help with the younger ones. So I flew with her and her younger brother, who was also climbing to Sydney, and it was there at nationals that I saw this little girl and she wasn't that little. She was 11 is actually really good,

00:09:22:14 - 00:09:42:09
Unknown
She's got real potential. Even though she'd only been climbing for about a year. She came seventh in the country for her age category in Boulder, that year. And I could see there were these other girls who had been doing a lot more. And, you know, so not and the parents had invested a lot more and I but I could see that she had a real talent and desire, and she really enjoyed it.

00:09:42:09 - 00:10:01:24
Unknown
So then when we came back from that competition, I guess I realized and I think looking back was fortuitous, but I went, I know my husband because I'm kind of the scheduler for the family. I realized, okay, so she really loves rock climbing. She's really serious about climbing. I should probably, you know, do more than what we're currently doing.

00:10:01:24 - 00:10:21:17
Unknown
And so I started looking at not just work doing ABC, but also there's another climbing gym where I learn lead, which is an important component in becoming climbing. So I started putting her in that all of these things were like over an hour away, and they were definitely a sacrifice. But you know, what has happened since is now she's 14 and she loves climbing.

00:10:21:17 - 00:10:55:07
Unknown
She's now, you know, the best in the country for her age category. And she's on the Australian youth program. And it's not that you invest in your child and they suddenly become the best in the world at the thing that they're doing. It's not even about that. It's about the fact that they find something they love and they become a bit driven by it, and it becomes a real hobby and interest, and it actually becomes a protective factor for them so that they're not, you know, dating prematurely or scrolling the internet or feeling like they just wasting and bingeing time on, on social media around, you know, movies and things like that.

00:10:55:10 - 00:11:13:01
Unknown
I just think for me, the takeaway of that period between 10 and 14 and what I've now seen, because I have a daughter who's now well into her teens, that if you nurture that spark and you do the sacrifices and take the time, it can actually produce fruit. That makes parenting easier down the track. And I'm very fortunate.

00:11:13:01 - 00:11:20:21
Unknown
I don't feel like we have a moody teenager in our house. I feel like we have a daughter who has things she wants to do in her life, and she sets herself goals and she goes for them.

00:11:20:21 - 00:11:32:22
Unknown
So in my view, parenting is about seasons. And at different seasons your kids will require different things of you. But between the ages of ten and 14, one of the goals, one of the big goals, is to help your child find their spark.

00:11:32:22 - 00:11:51:23
Unknown
What is it that makes them truly alive and to nurture and support them? Your child's like biggest cheerleader. And in that time, in that period, our goal as parents, I guess our job as parents is to invest in them. So that then when they become teenagers, they are able to fully kind of invest in them in that themselves.

00:11:51:23 - 00:12:07:19
Unknown
So, you know, now with climbing, it's not up to me to be the taxi driver because my daughter is using public transport. She's often, using her own money to pay for things and buy things that she needs. And she's investing in herself. So, you know, I hope you enjoyed today's video. Tell me in the comments what you thought.

00:12:07:21 - 00:12:10:20
Unknown
And I look forward to seeing you next time on The Doctor Joe Show.