Kids Who Shine – Helping Children Avoid Burnout

I recently read this blog by Nick Petrie that outlines the path for burnout for adults. Burnout is a work-related stress that looks like mental exhaustion and a general lack of motivation. While there is a ton of research around burnout for adults, I can’t help but draw parallels to so many of our 2e kiddos. How many children (especially 2e kids) start this path to burnout before they even enter high school or college? How many are already burned out? Is our education model, full of perfection and tedium, actually training kids to grow up into adults that are primed for burnout? And most importantly, how can we help them, and ourselves, before we get there?

Following Petrie’s path to burnout, I’m going to outline the Path to Shine – 7 steps for helping your child avoid burnout. As always, we recognize that all children are different, and our differently-wired kiddos can need more or less support in each of these areas.

1.       Help children learn metacognition. Many times, our kids have self-talk or beliefs about who they are or who they “should” be. This can be anything from “I’m great at soccer” to “I’m dumb”. These are all internalized beliefs that kids use to create their self-identity. These belief systems can carry into new environments that no longer fit. We see this a lot with “smart” kids, who go into a new school and find out they are no longer the “smartest” child anymore, and it can create a real identity crisis. You can help your child by helping them learn to think about their thinking. Ask questions like, “Why do you think that?” for both healthy and negative thought patterns so that your child can develop a healthy habit of challenging their own self-concept.

2.       Recognize that perfection is an unrealistic value of effort or time. We have a tendency to think that children need to do everything at 100% all the time, get 100% on every test, achieve 100% on all things. Some parents think that anything less than an A is equivalent to failing. Our school system is designed to assign worth on a grading curve, and our children internalize this. We have to help our children understand that a grade does not equal worth or value. It is much more important to emphasize intrinsic motivation, hard work, and passion, than external validation like grades. This is a really critical step for our perfectionistic children who often struggle with accepting anything other than an impossibly high standard. Praise effort. Celebrate kids failing badly at something that was hard and passion-driven than succeeding at something that was easy and was done to check boxes.

 3.       Remind children to check in with their bodies. Many 2e children, especially our ADHDers, can hyper-focus on high-interest tasks. They may read until 3:00 in the morning or forget to eat or drink water while playing a video game. Many of these children have sensory issues that may make bathrooms uncomfortable or workspaces overwhelming. We need to help these children learn to trust themselves and their bodies, even asking children to “check in with their bodies” or taking “movement breaks” during screen time can help them build long-term habits to avoid burnout. We need to model healthy living practices ourselves – including healthy habits around exercise, nutrition, and self-care.

We hope these first three tips for avoiding burnout really resonate with you.

Next week, we’ll provide 4 more tips to complete the Path to Shine. To make sure you don’t miss Part 2, input your email below.

Let us know in the comments how you help your child avoid burnout or what you have done in your own life to avoid burnout.