Happy 2020!  It's a brand new year.  And like most people, you might have made or are going to make some new year's resolutions for 2020.  Perhaps you want to learn how to meditate, erase your debt, eat more fruits and vegetables, go on long hikes, or be mindful when talking to your spouse and children.  

We start the new year and each day with the hope of attaining these goals.  But we are often really afraid to try because we have tried so many times before and don't want to be disappointed.  Recent research suggests that 88% of people fail to stick to their resolutions to change and improve their lives.

We often fail to change our habits because our brain craves consistency and routine and tries so hard to resist change.  It can be very discouraging to try to do things differently, only to find ourselves falling back into old maladaptive patterns.

Most people believe that if we are hard on ourselves, we will be motivated to change.  But the contrary is actually true.  Showing self-compassion, being warm and supportive towards ourselves and actively soothing ourselves, helps more when we fall short of our intentions and goals.  Self-compassion leads to less anxiety, less depression, and greater peace of mind.  Most importantly, it makes us feel more motivated to make the improvements we want to make.

Here are three steps to achieve your resolutions.

1. Forgive yourself

The first step to making lasting change is to forgive yourself for having failed in the past. It’s okay; it’s normal, even. You did the best you could with the skills you had. Take a deep breath and soothe yourself like you might soothe or talk to a good friend.   Use kind, reassuring words to ease yourself out of a stress response. Remind yourself that few people are successful the first time they try to change their routines. Explain to yourself that feeling bad about your behavior will not increase your future success.

2. Aim for an inherently rewarding target

The second step is to set the right resolution, whether that’s a big audacious goal, a new habit you’d like to get into, or a bad habit you’d like to break.

To begin, you might want to:

• Lose weight
• Get in shape or establish an exercise habit
• Spend more time with your friends

It’s important to figure out WHY you want to do this thing that you haven’t been doing so far. You might have a whole laundry list of reasons for wanting to do what you want to do, and that’s great. But right now, I want you to think of the single most compelling way that you’ll benefit from achieving your goal.

Chances are, you’ve come up with a super logical reason for, say, losing weight or exercising, like that it will lower your blood pressure.

Here’s the thing: Even though we all like to think of ourselves as rational people, logic doesn’t motivate us nearly as much as our emotions do. Why? Because we approach what feels good and avoid what feels bad.

This means that we tend to stick with behavior changes for longer when we aim for something that feels good. Doing something because we feel like we should do it doesn’t feel good. It feels like we’re being forced. It’s stressful, and stress makes us seek comfort, often in the very form of behavior that we are trying to avoid.

So, ask yourself in your heart of hearts, how do you really want to feel? Identify a WHY for your resolution that will motivate you over the long haul.

Maybe you want to lose weight, for example, and so you plan to cut baked goods out of your diet, which happen to be your favorite foods. How will that make you feel?

At first, you might feel great, because you’ve just made a healthy decision for yourself. But if you don’t cheat on your diet, you’ll likely soon feel deprived. And if you do begin to cheat on your diet, you’ll probably feel anxious and guilty. Both of these feeling states are not motivating and uncomfortable, which will make it easy for you to give up on your diet.

But maybe the reason that you want to lose weight is so that you feel healthy and strong. Feeling stronger and healthier are very motivating feeling states, which will make it much easier for you to keep your new habit.

With this in mind, rethink your goal or resolution: Restate it for yourself in terms of how you want to feel.  For example:

• “I forbid myself to eat baked goods” could become → “I want to feel healthy and strong.”
• “I have to get more sleep” could become → “I want to feel well-rested and energetic.”
• “I should spend more time with friends” could become → “I want to feel loving and connected.”

3. Refine your resolution

​What actions and behaviors have led you to feel what you want to feel in the past?

Maybe you tend to feel well-rested and energetic when you go to bed before 10 p.m. Perhaps you tend to feel healthy and strong when you go for a hike. Maybe you feel loving and connected when you spend one-on-one time with your sister.

The important thing here is that it is something that you already have experience with; we human beings tend to be truly terrible at predicting how something will make us feel. But we do well to use our own experience to predict how we’ll feel in the future.

Here’s an example of how we frequently go wrong: Say we'd like to feel stronger this upcoming year. This calls for a get-in-shape habit. So, what would be a good way to get in shape? We could train for a marathon! Fun! Ambitious! But before we start researching destination marathons (because why not make it a vacation, too?), we'd do well to stop and ask: How do we feel when we are training for a long run? 

On the other hand, I can think of two activities that DO make me feel stronger:

• Taking long hikes
• High-intensity exercise classes where I sweat a lot

Your “why” for your goal needs to be a rewarding feeling that you experience when you are doing your resolution or, at the very least, immediately after you do it. A daily hike must genuinely make you feel energized, for example, if that is the feeling you are after. 

From here, refine your resolution one more time. Make sure that your resolution reflects a really specific behavior, so that you know if you are succeeding or not. For example, resolve to take three hikes per week after work on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays instead of resolving to “go for more hikes.”

Finally, do a little reality check. Setting unrealistic resolutions is a sure path to failure. If it’s just not realistic for you to, say, leave work an hour early on Tuesdays and Thursdays so that you can do your hike, please don’t make that your resolution.

If you are now aiming for a target that is specific, realistic, and inherently rewarding (because you know it is going to make you feel good), you are all set to accomplish those 2020 resolutions!

Psychologists and child development experts suggest that not over-scheduling your child over the summer is beneficial and can help them to develop their own interests and passions.   Read this short article to learn more and a specific strategy to help with the "I'm bored. What can I do?" questions.

Most everyone loves to travel. Getting away and making trips to your favorite vacation spot for a weekend with your family is a great way to escape the stress of everyday life. However, for families who have children or teenagers with autism or Asperger's, the thought of a vacation may evoke feelings of anxiety and fear.

Traveling with children with autism may seem difficult, but when you plan your vacations ahead of time and with care, they can be an absolute treat and a great way to strengthen familial bonds.

Here are a few tips to make your vacation a pleasurable one for your child and the entire family.











​Choose an ideal destination for your child

Encourage your children to participate actively in the planning process and evaluate their current interests, attention span, sensory processing/information-processing abilities, and relate it to your upcoming trip. Choose a place where your child would still get to do activities that they typically enjoy. For example, if your child loves amusement parks, try taking them to Disneyland, if your child loves playing with water, consider planning a beach vacation. Make sure you’re not overwhelming your child by involving them in too many activities, as this would result in stressing out not just your child, but the rest of the family as well.

Arrange proper identification for your child

Parents of children with autism often struggle to manage their child’s wandering during vacations. Nearly half of children with autism tend to wander or run off, causing tremendous concern and anxiety to parents.

Here are a few identification tools you can use

• Tracking devices: Choose a suitable device that matches your child’s requirement and have your child wear it every time you are out.  Practice using the tracking device before the vacation to sort out any problems.

 

• Personal IDs: Use medical IDs for personal identification. These should include information about your child, address, and phone number and any medical information. Create a few handouts to give out, if necessary.  These handouts should contain your address and phone number as well as a picture of your child.

Predict your child’s needs

Parents can typically anticipate their child’s needs. However, this becomes even more necessary with the child with autism. This is because children with autism typically struggle to accept changes in their routine, and a vacation requires a divergence from their usual schedule. This could lead to meltdowns and anxiety attacks. To reduce such incidents from happening when traveling, here are some ideas.  Call the airline in advance to check for delays. This gives you enough time to make special accommodations.  Work with your child on the need for patience for TSA lines at the airport as well as amusement park rides.  Use social stories to help prepare your child for the trip including ordering food in restaurants, sleeping in a new bed in the hotel or resort, and tolerating long car rides.

Prepare a checklist of essentials

Prepare a checklist so you leave behind nothing that is important to your child. Always have reinforcements handy to reward your child for their good behavior. You can use soothers such as MP3 players a piece of cloth, string, or a toy to help keep your child calm.  Pack their favorite snacks, toys, stuffed animals, books and assistive communication tools.  Enlist your child's help so they can add necessary items or alert you if something is missing. 

Enact vacation scenarios with your child

Preparations for an upcoming trip should start well in advance of the trip. It is recommended to  start your groundwork at least 2-3 months before the vacation. Talk about the trip with your child every day by creating sequential picture stories of planned events and provide simple captions for each picture. Role-playing is one of the best ways to help children understand what they can expect to see while on vacation.  Having meaningful conversations about the trip with your child or teenager will help to relieve stress and reduce problematic behaviors during the vacation.

No doubt about it, Michael Phelps has made waves in his chosen sport. In 2004, at the age of 18, he swam his way to eight medals (six of them gold) at the summer Olympics in Athens. By the time the 2016 Olympics wrapped up in Rio, he was the most decorated Olympian of all time, with 28 medals — 23 of them gold. Now retired from swimming, he holds 7 world records, including the 200-meter butterfly and the 4 x 100-meter freestyle relay.

Michael Phelps, the world’s greatest Olympian of all time, was once diagnosed with ADHD. Phelps’ mother, Debbie, recalls how his hyperactivity invited constant complaints from his teachers and friends. When she approached an expert to analyze his behavior, ADHD was identified as the cause. Debbie decided to help Michael with improving his behavior. She introduced him to various activities and diverted his hyperactivity into those actions. He was encouraged to pursue swimming, baseball, cross-country racing and lacrosse. But swimming became his main focus, after a while, and his dedication to excel in the sport made him the most talented swimming champion of all time. It not only helped him increase his concentration but also helped improve his conduct.

Michael Phelps is a practical example of how children with ADHD can gain focus and improve their behavior through sports and other activities. His life teaches us how one can find opportunity in adversity and turn one’s weakness into a strength.

Research suggests that involving children with ADHD in sports and other outdoor activities provides them with a more open environment to express their feelings. Playing sports helps children reduce their anxiety and depression. It also helps them understand the dynamics of functioning in a team and inculcates the spirit of winning and losing, graciously.

How do you find the right sport for your child?

Pay attention to their interests! Learn about their interests and list all the activities that are suitable for your child. From the list of activities, ask your child to pick their favorite one. Remember to never force your child into any sport or activity without their consent, as it can become a cause for more stress. Taking part in sports and other activities can be difficult at the beginning. This is because children with ADHD tend to display hyperactivity, impulsivity, and inattention. However, with an accommodative stance, support from parents and the right coach, getting a child into the game is doable.
What kind of sport suits your child?

As mentioned earlier, it has to be to their liking. There are many sports and outdoor activities that can help your child expend excess energy and, in the process, build concentration and team-building skills. Compare and analyze all the activities and choose the one that best fits the personality of your child.  Here are some ideas of sports and activities that might help the child with ADHD.

1. Tennis

Sports can be classified into team sports and sports that are played individually. Tennis is one such activity that is played individually or in a dyad, and this can be especially beneficial for those who find it hard to cope with a team. With tennis, children have the ability to compete against themselves and master the skill. Playing ball games is a good mechanism to release pent up anger and stress.

2. Martial Arts

Martial arts training involves a step-by-step learning path. A step-wise approach is good as it helps children with ADHD learn to be focused on an activity for a certain duration of time without becoming distracted. It also helps in learning behavioral aspects such as being respectful, exercising self-control and self-discipline. Acquiring martial arts skills requires that the child receive and obey directions/instructions from their sensei. This can inculcate the habit of taking directions from others when undertaking new activities, a skill that can improve outcomes in school and work environments.

​3. Swimming

Swimming is a popular recreational activity among children of all ages. Some of these children go on to pursue it as a competitive sport. It is an excellent activity for children with ADHD.  Besides being fun, it teaches coordinated body movement, provides sensory comfort and enhances breathing control. It also boosts self-esteem and enhances physical fitness.

​4. Gymnastics

The equipment and movements involved in gymnastics are similar to the ones used in occupational therapy.  Such activities help children pay close attention to their body movements and body balance. It builds your child’s core strength, sense of balance and muscle awareness to better manage any deficiencies in sensory processing.

​5. Wrestling

Wrestling is a great sport option, if you have a highly energetic child on your hands. It would be a good idea to channel all the excess energy into something fun and competitive. Dealing with any aggressive tendencies by channeling them into a competitive sport is an excellent strategy. It will also teach your child to exercise their strength with discipline and control.

6. Track and Cross Country

In most individual sports, children have to wait for their turn to play. However, a simple activity, such as running track or cross country, bypasses the need to wait. Also, there would be less chance of the child becoming distracted because there would be others around to remind them of their goal. Therefore, running helps in learning discipline and in social integration with other children.

7. Soccer

For children with ADHD, soccer is an incredible sport to play. It increases team spirit and encourages peer bonding. Healthy competition encourages the child to play actively and can be highly stimulating. Since this game requires one to act continuously, difficulties with short attention span could be improved upon through this sport.  

Apart from the above-mentioned sports, there may be other sports and activities that your child is interested in or good at. These may include individual activities such as biking, running, or natural activities like feeding a bird, painting a fence or raking the leaves. Always remember that team sports, such as baseball, soccer, basketball, etc., require a lot of physical contact and attention to detail as one plays. Analyze your child’s areas of needs and strengths in order to see if they are comfortable with physical contact and can perform the quick mental processing needed for such sports. Only after a thorough analysis, decide which sports suit them best and which does not.

Another key aspect is to find the right coach who can understand children with ADHD and give them support to excel in their favorite sport. Coaches have a huge impact on your child, so educate the coach on your child’s behavior. This gives an idea of your child’s potential and limitations to the coach, and training can be suitably modified to match your child’s needs.
Sports have a positive impact on children and can help in gaining self-esteem and confidence, along with reducing their hyperactivity. Sports are also crucial to building the social life of a child with ADHD. So, let your child play their favorite sport and see for yourself the positive changes it will bring.

April is Autism Awareness Month!  As a clinical psychologist who specializes in working with children and teenagers on the autism spectrum, I read and wanted to share these four blog posts that I found helpful and well-written.  Thank you to a reader of the blog who informed me of these blogs.

Helping Asperger's Teens to Survive and Thrive: 15 Key Steps

How to Create a Backyard Sanctuary for Kids with Disabilities

15 Behavioral Strategies for Children on the  Autism Spectrum

For Teachers and Educators: Strategies for Working with Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

     If you are a parent or work with children in any capacity, you have probably heard of Dr. Carol Dweck.  She is a professor of psychology at Stanford University.  Among her many professional accomplishments, she has written a best-selling book called Mindset.  
     Many people assume that superior intelligence or ability is a key to success.  But more than 30 years of research  has shown that an overemphasis on intellect or talent, and the implication that these traits are fixed or innate, leaves people feeling vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges, and unmotivated to learn.   Teaching people to have "a growth mindset" encourages a focus on the process, rather than talent or intelligence and produces high achievers in school, work, and life. 
     Parents and teachers can help teach a "growth mindset" in children by praising them for their persistence or strategies, rather than the child's intellect or talent.  The key is to provide the child with specific praise versus generic praise.  For example, telling a child "You are a good athlete," may actually undermine their abilities in the long run, but noting to that same child that "I liked how much you practice free throws to get better" demonstrates more specific praise on their effort, rather than the child's talent.  
     Here are some other examples:

• "I liked the way you tried different strategies on that math problem until you finally got it."
• " You really studied for your science test.  You read over the material several times, made those flash cards, and quizzed yourself.  It really worked!"
• "Mistakes are so interesting.  Here is a mistake.  Let's see what we can learn from it."
• "You really took your time with your drawing.  I liked how you added details to the house and the landscape."

     Invaluable praise like this can foster motivation and confidence in children and teens by helping them to focus on their specific actions that led to their success.

Many people feel as if they're adrift in the world. They work hard, but they don't seem to get anywhere worthwhile.  A key reason that they feel this way is that they haven't spent enough time thinking about what they want from life, and haven't set formal goals for themselves.

How to Set a Goal

First consider what you want to achieve, and then commit to it. Set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound) goals that motivate you and write them down to make them feel tangible. Then plan the steps you must take to realize your goal, and cross off each one as you work through them.

Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn your vision of this future into reality.

The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You'll also quickly spot the distractions that can, so easily, lead you astray.

Starting to Set Personal Goals

You set your goals on a number of levels:

• First you create your "big picture" of what you want to do with your life (or over, for instance, the next 10 years), and identify the large-scale goals that you want to achieve.
• Then, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit to reach your lifetime goals.
• Finally, once you have your plan, you start working on it to achieve these goals.

This is why we start the process of setting goals by looking at your lifetime goals. Then, we work down to the things that you can do in, say, the next five years, then next year, next month, next week, and today, to start moving towards them.

Setting Lifetime Goals

The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or at least, by a significant and distant age in the future). Setting lifetime goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.

To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, here are some ideas for setting goals in multiple categories:

• Career – What level do you want to reach in your career, or what do you want to achieve?
• Financial – How much do you want to earn, by what stage? How is this related to your career goals?
• Education – Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to have in order to achieve other goals?
• Family – Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?
• Artistic – Do you want to achieve any artistic goals?
• Attitude – Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? (If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.)
• Physical – Are there any athletic goals that you want to achieve, or do you want good health into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
• Pleasure – How do you want to enjoy yourself?
• Public Service – Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?

Spend some time brainstorming these things, and then select one or more goals in each category that best reflect what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals that you can focus on.

Setting Smaller Goals

Once you have set your lifetime goals, set a five-year plan of smaller goals that you need to complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan.  Then create a one-year plan, six-month plan, and a one-month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.
Then create a daily list of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals.

At an early stage, your smaller goals might be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your higher level goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting.

Finally review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.

Staying on Course

Once you've decided on your first set of goals, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your list on a daily basis.
Periodically review the longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience.

SMART Goals

A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART  mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants (some of which I've included in parenthesis), SMART usually stands for:

• S – Specific (or Significant)
• M – Measurable (or Meaningful)
• A – Attainable (or Action-Oriented)
• R – Relevant (or Rewarding)
• T – Time-bound (or Trackable)

For example, instead of having "to sail around the world" as a goal, it's more powerful to use the SMART goal "To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2027." Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been completed beforehand!

Further Tips for Setting Your Goals

The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective, achievable goals:

• State each goal as a positive statement 
• Be precise: Set precise goals, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you'll know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
• Set priorities – When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by having too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
• Write goals down – This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
• Keep operational goals small – Keep the low-level goals that you're working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward.
• Set performance goals, not outcome goals – You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. It can be quite dispiriting to fail to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control!  In business, these reasons could be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy. In sport, they could include poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck.
• Set realistic goals – It's important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (for example, employers, parents, media, or society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions.
  It's also possible to set goals that are too difficult because you might not appreciate either the obstacles in the way, or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance.

Achieving Goals

When you've achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress that you've made towards other goals.

If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately. All of this helps you build the self-confidence you deserve.

With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:

• If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goal harder.
• If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goal a little easier.
• If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so.
• If you noticed a deficit in your skills despite achieving the goal, decide whether to set goals to fix this.

       Studies have shown how being distracted can become a bad habit that ultimately decreases our effectiveness at work or in school.  Psychologists have identified new ways to help people overcome the hurdles that stand in the way of their productivity.  Here are some key strategies to enhance your productivity.

1.  Minimize Interruptions
            We are constantly bombarded by emails, ringing phones, text messages that reek havoc on our productivity.  When you need to concentrate and focus, find ways to create that space.  Put up a "Do Not Disturb" sign on your office door.  Turn your cell phone off.  Put your phone on silent and put the screen face-down so you can't see texts or notifications.  Study after study has shown that we, as humans, are not good at multi-tasking.  We think that we are but we are not.  These interruptions take us away from the task at hand. 

2.  Increase Attention Span in 15 Minute Increments
           One way to increase attention span and productivity, is to take a "technology break" after 15-minutes of uninterrupted work.  Give yourself a study or work break where you can check email, check alerts or texts, after completing 15 minutes of  uninterrupted work.  Once you master working for 15 minutes at a time, start increasing the time before taking a technology break.  Research has shown that taking small breaks allows us to maintain focus.  

3.  Write Down Your Goals To Boost Productivity
          We have all heard that setting goals is important but how to do this can seem elusive.  Establishing a habit of writing down your goals can boost performance and productivity.  The act of writing down a goal seems to make us accountable to the goal.  The act of writing down goals can also help us to become more reflective as we evaluate our goal outcomes and handle problems that may arise.

Whether you are going on a business trip to Turkey or just want to impress your significant other with la langue de l'amour, there are many reasons to learn a foreign language.  A wealth of research has investigated what helps the most.  

Here are a few strategies to help pave the way to become fluent in that next language.

1.  Watch Social Cues: Pay attention to nonverbal cues, such as gestures,  pointing, and eye gaze.  They can enhance your understanding of sounds, words, phrases, and even grammar.  In Japanese, for example, the gestures for "Come here" looks like the American gesture for "Go Away."  

2.  Listen To Your Own Accent:  You can improve your pronunciation by recording yourself in conversation and practicing with a native speaker.

3.  Tune Out to Tune In:  Listening to the new language spoken in the background while doing other activities or tasks can help you to learn to distinguish among similar sounds.  So, feel free to put those telnovelas on while you cook dinner.  

4.  Sleep On It:  Going to bed soon after you practicing a new language or drilling vocabulary can help you to consolidate what you have learned.

5.  Say It Again:  Hearing and repeating words and phrases helps you to learn them faster and commit them to memory more.

6.  Immerse Yourself:  Of course, we have all heard that nothing is more effective for learning a new language than complete immersion in the culture.  Living and working with native speakers can round out this experience.