Friday D&D

Dates that don't work for D&D on Fridays

• 10/14 (Fall Break)

Let’s look at an example where a young child Anna has been asked by her father Tom to serve as a teddy bear. Tom is trying to finish writing an email before they need to leave and Anna is begging him to sing a song. Tom knows he won’t be able to sing and finish the email at the same time, so he says, “Tell you what. I’ll be happy to sing a song in another few minutes. Could you be a teddy bear for me so I can finish up more quickly?”

Anna agrees and this is what happens:

Tom: Sigh. It’s taken me so long to reply. I could actually hit send right now, but I’ve been waiting because I was thinking about including my new draft if I’d gotten further along with it. Now, because I don’t want to include the new draft at this point, I seem to be stuck because I seem to have a rule that all this time can’t have passed for no reason. I can’t just send what I already had before.

Anna: Sounds like you feel sad…and stuck… It sounds like you don’t know what to do.

Tom: But, why do I have this rule? Oh wait, actually, I can just send her one little part that I could use help on. That’s better than sending her the whole draft and if I could actually get help with that one little part, that’d be fabulous.

Having a teddy bear along for the ride can:

• Cause different things to jump out at you automatically, making it much easier to build momentum and gain traction.
• Support you with the feeling that help is right within reach.
• Cause shifts in perspectives, mindsets, etc, perhaps because of being more likely to stumble across things, like assumptions you didn't even know you were making.

Teddy Bear Talk Support (TBTS) was the subject of my previous parenting column. It is a structure that I came up with for harnessing the power of talking out loud where the listener is restricted to either only listening or only doing a few other limited things, like asking open, honest questions, and making guesses about what seems important. TBTS is not just for parents, but once again for this column, TBTS in the context of parenting will be my focus.

For example, at one point I found myself repeatedly saying the words "grumble grumble grumble," and this proved to be a very satisfying way to convey the gist of what I wanted to communicate. In fact, it definitely felt more satisfying than if I had spelled things out with more words, where we could get mired in the details for no good reason. Saying "grumble grumble grumble" over and over again was a great way to acknowledge, validate, and sit with how I was feeling. The content of the words I would've said instead of "grumble grumble grumble" didn't matter. It was getting to feel the feeling that mattered. So, this made it so the content of the words didn't have undue influence. The teddy bear didn't need to be filled in on the full picture. Didn't need to know why, or what, or anything else.

Retrieval practice, something they can do with other people instead of or as well as with you. Retrieval practice is a powerful and effective learning strategy that involves actively recalling information from memory rather than simply reviewing or re-reading material. Retrieval practice is an effective learning strategy because it strengthens memory, promotes long-term retention, helps identify gaps in knowledge, engages your mind actively, aids self-assessment, overcomes the illusion of competence, develops transferable skills, and is an efficient way to learn and remember information.

What can you use this to help with? All manner of things, but some easy examples are situations where the talker is feeling stuck, or having trouble getting started with something, dealing with something that's bugging them, etc.

For example, the talker could be a child with a school assignment or a decision to make, or the talker could be a parent who is not finding it easy to get along with somebody or who is having trouble coming up with a good analogy.

The trick is, as the listener, not to go about this by saying what would I do if I were the talker. The listener's job is to not do that! This is about helping the talker help themselves, and giving them the chance to share what's going on with them with someone else.

In fact, the teddy bear need not even fully understand what the talker is saying!!! The talker is talking for their own benefit, not the teddy bear's! This is how one parent was able to help their high schooler with complex math that the parent couldn't understand.

In fact, the teddy bear need not even fully understand what the talker is saying!!! If they have enough of a gist of it to be able to nod at the right time, that's plenty. This is so not about the teddy bear that it's often better for them to keep their mouth shut even though they can't fully follow (unless, of course, in cases where the talker actually needs the teddy bear to be more on the exact same page). The talker is talking for their own benefit, not the teddy bear's.

This is how one parent was able to help their high schooler with complex math that she couldn't understand. He would talk through the math problems, and she served as the teddy bear, the second set of eyes, the other mind.

This gift of "hearing people to speech," providing the space for them to be more able to speak, is a gift that children can also give parents.

It can be so easy to feel isolated, and it helps to have easy ways to reach out.

What if asking this or offering this was as easy as asking someone to give you a high five or a fist bump? What if TBTS was just as universally understood?

I encourage you to imagine and experiment with the possibilities, and I'd love to hear about what you're thinking and experiencing at teddybear@umich.edu.

Leeann Fu is the co-facilitator of Empowering Wisdom parenting circles (empoweringwisdom.org) and the creator of Teddy Bear Talk Support (teddybeartalksupport.com). Leeann leads workshops on Teddy Bear Talk Support specifically for parents as well as workshops for everyone (teddybeartalksupport.com/workshops).