Things You Learn in Therapy
Things You Learn in Therapy
Cooperation: Going Farther Together
Cooperation sounds simple – working together to accomplish more than we could alone – but as parents and educators, we often struggle to maintain this focus as children grow. This candid conversation between Leslie Bolser and Dr. Beth Trammell explores how our emphasis on cooperation naturally diminishes as we begin prioritizing independence in our children.
For preschoolers, cooperation begins with sharing toys and parallel play, creating the foundation for teamwork. Surprisingly, allowing young children autonomy in tasks like tying shoes actually develops their capacity for future cooperation. The elementary years present a critical juncture where parents typically shift toward encouraging individual achievement rather than collaborative skills. Beth suggests intentionally highlighting moments when teamwork creates something "bigger, cooler, more amazing" than solo efforts.
The conversation takes an unexpectedly vulnerable turn when discussing the common mindset many parents inherited: "If you want something done right, do it yourself." This efficiency-driven approach – whether tackling children's school projects or household management – models isolation rather than cooperation. The hosts admit their own struggles with this mentality while offering practical alternatives: family projects with genuine collaboration, asking teenagers for specific help when overwhelmed, and openly discussing strategies for working with difficult people.
Perhaps most valuable is their emphasis on repair when cooperation breaks down. Showing children how to restart collaboration after conflict or isolation provides equally important lessons. Whether you're raising toddlers learning to share or teenagers preparing for their first job, this episode offers refreshingly honest perspectives on nurturing this essential life skill.
Subscribe and join us next month as we continue exploring character values that build stronger families, schools, and communities.
www.bethtrammell.com
All right, welcome back everybody. We're ready for a new word this month. I'm pretty excited about this conversation. I think it could be pretty interesting this month, so we'll jump right in. Let's get started. My name is Leslie Bolser. I'm the creative director for Core Essential Values, and that is a curriculum company that works with schools and community organizations and families, and we talk about words that matter each month and how we can use those in our schools and in our communities and in our families, just to make it a much healthier and more collaborative place. We'll say so. I'm joined today, as usual, by my friend, dr Beth Tramiel. Beth, can you introduce yourself?
Speaker 2:I like how you did that there, thanks. People are going to really like it when they listen back. I am so happy to be here. I am Dr Beth Tramiel. I'm a psychologist and a professor of psychology at IU East in Richmond, indiana, and I'm the director of the Master's in Mental Health Counseling program there. And, yeah, I love to make words matter for good. That's my website and my kind of philosophy and the thing I try to do, but do this cooperation one. It's going to be a good one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let's, let's tattle on ourselves here for just a minute before we recorded, we were just talking. This is this one was tough for us to schedule. We both are pretty busy and we had a hard time getting this on our calendars. And, ironically, the word is cooperation and we agreed that we both, instead of cooperating on recording this podcast, would rather have just recorded it ourselves Separately. Maybe we could have done like some voice memos back and forth.
Speaker 2:What Beth would have said. Now what Les would have said.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. Anyway, I think we love this word cooperation and the way we're talking about it is working together to do more than you can do alone, and I think that is so true first of all, and noble right. It is correct that when we go together we go farther, but it is not easier in a lot of ways. We talk about this a lot. We're going to talk about different age groups, but we really do talk about this a lot with little kids. We talk a lot about sharing and cooperating and getting along and that sort of falls off, I think, as our kids get older and we have other things that we're kind of impressing upon them. So I'm really interested to hear from you today about how to keep that momentum that we start with younger kids all the way through. So let's start with our pre-K friends, with our little ones. How do you other than, hey, just be nice and share? How do you talk about cooperation when you're talking with little kids?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I think that that is really laying the foundation, because at the foundation of cooperation is learning to operate together right, and so it's sharing, it's playing in space with other people and it's allowing another friend to come and play in the area where you're playing or with the toys that you're playing with, that kind of parallel or cooperative play. I mean it's actually called cooperative play in development, and so we want to see kids who can, yeah, kind of work together, but their work at that age is playing, and so we want to see them playing together in a way that, yeah again, although sometimes it's hard to remember, it does usually mean like when you have more than one person working or playing together, it does produce something cooler when you've got more heads that you put together to create it.
Speaker 1:Yeah and I know we talk about this in relation to other words that we go through the year with but things like allowing your pre-K or toddler, however old they are, to tie their shoes on their own even though it would be way easier just to hop in and do it yourself, or to put their jacket on by themselves, or whatever it is that they're learning to do on their own. Us allowing our little ones to have a little bit of that autonomy actually is cooperation. If we're looking down the road right and we're looking to create humans that can work together with others, we have to be able to step out of that a little bit when they're small.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think on the flip side of that, independence is, as they get older, what kind of keeps us from promoting quite as much cooperation? I think we're more focused on independence and getting them to do things on their own and be their own kind of person, because you don't want to be lugging them around the grocery store on your hip anymore. You know, like I really want you to cooperate with the plan, for example, that you can walk through the grocery store on your own. But I think we we do tend to shift our focus away from kind of doing everything together when they're really little with their peers to hey, I want you to be able to be independent, I want you to. Unfortunately, well, I'll just say it, I think sometimes we push our kids to want to stand out right, and so I think sometimes in an effort to kind of promote independence or uniqueness or bestness I don't think that's a word, but I think sometimes that becomes tricky to help kids understand how those things go hand in hand, because sometimes they don't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really great point. So we're kind of naturally moving into elementary age or a little bit older students and you said that you think that our focus on their independence sometimes maybe pulls us away from talking about or encouraging cooperation a lot. So how can we do a better job of that? I know this is the time when kids are starting to try team sports or try out for plays or do things that involve naturally working with others. How can we make sure that we're doing a good job as parents of setting them up for success when they're in those teams or groups?
Speaker 2:Well, I think sometimes it may be just pointing out like, hey, you know, working as a team really does mean you get to do bigger, cooler, more amazing things that you couldn't have done on your own, and you maybe have never heard this word before, but that's what cooperation means. So I think sometimes it's explicitly pointing it out for them. It also is remembering that cooperation can happen in tiny, tiny ways or in big ways on a team, but it could also be like, hey, can you both carry this box into the car for me? And that's cooperation, that's working together. And so I think it's trying to infuse.
Speaker 2:It's actually the thing I love about core essential values is that sometimes every month I'm like, yeah, every one of these words I need to be infusing all the time. But it really does kind of create this focus that, yes, if you can infuse cooperation every day for the rest of your kid's life, then that's great. But even if you just focus on it this month for just a few times this month, right over time we're planting all these seeds in our kids to learn not only what these things are that we value as parents, but also the language, the vocabulary that goes along with those things.
Speaker 1:That's really great. So as we move into middle school or high school and we talk about cooperation, it gets even more important. Right Now, not only are they on teams or with groups doing different activities, they're also a lot of times put in groups for school that involve cooperating or working well with others. And then eventually, at some point they're going to get a job. Maybe their first job involves cooperating with others and working well with other people. So how are we continually encouraging that for them as they get older?
Speaker 2:Well, this might bring us back to kind of the elementary age a little bit. You know, sometimes it comes to modeling, cooperation. Well, so I'm thinking about the family project that comes home in like second grade or first grade or something I feel like my school has, like all of my kids, when they went through first or second grade, had like the family pumpkin project or the family turkey project.
Speaker 2:And I'm just saying like hypothetically, if you had a real high need for efficiency you know, I'm just saying like there might be a person you know, like me, who really values efficiency, we really value pretty artwork, and so sometimes it's just easier to just scurry the project along instead of kind of cooperate together to get that project done. So I say this in kind of full disclosure that I am not necessarily always great at modeling cooperation in this way, right? And so I think about like like even chores around the house, right, do we all work together as a family to do the dishes? Or is it like no, you do the dishes tonight and you do the dishes another night? So how are we modeling cooperation? Because I think, as we're planting those seeds, as our kids get older, they learn even in the kitchen or in the living room how to cooperate with other people to achieve kind of this shared goal.
Speaker 2:Now, if you're a person who is like, yep, definitely did my kid's pumpkin project for him because I did not want to do that, or the science fair, the trifold board, that just seems to be, yeah, just like a special layer of extra joy. Anyway, if you're like, hey, that time has passed, my kid's a teenager, how do I like start having this conversation? I think you could start by kind of the low hanging fruit for me would be you know how do they get along well with their friends? Yeah, because it's easier to do cooperative work with people you like or enjoy or want to spend time with. It's less fun to do cooperative work with people that get on your nerves, like what might happen when you start working in a job and you're like, actually this person doesn't pull their own weight and now I have to work with them on my shift and that's annoying.
Speaker 2:So if you start planting seeds or start having conversations with them about you know how are you working as a team or how's everybody getting along? Or you know, I actually have. Sometimes, when my, my teenagers have their friends over, I just intentionally have them work on something together, like, hey, you're going to make some muffins together. I just want to see how y'all make this work and then we can have muffins, you know. So anyway, those are just a few thoughts that I had there.
Speaker 1:Another thought that I had as you were talking through that is again kind of about modeling. But I find that sometimes when my I have older children and sometimes when they get stressed or overwhelmed when there are a lot of things on their sort of mental to do list, I find that one thing that can be helpful for them is if I say which of those things can I help you with Pick?
Speaker 1:one thing Tell me how I can help, right, instead of telling them what I will do or taking over a project or doing something for them, just saying you pick something on there that's really stressing you out and you tell me how I can be helpful. I think it gives them a little bit of that agency and it also gets them in the habit of asking for help when they need it, because it's it can be easy to get overwhelmed and then you know especially I think as moms we a lot of times just think we can handle it and we don't say I really need help with this tonight, I have too many things going on, I've overbooked myself. I need help with this. I don't know that we do that enough for our kids to see how to do that themselves when they're feeling anxious or overwhelmed with the amount of work that they have to do.
Speaker 2:One of the most common phrases I remember from my childhood was if you want something done the right way, you do it yourself. Yes, absolutely. I mean, were you raised with that phrase or that sentence?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and I also sort of just believed that it's still a little bit. I'm not going to lie, Dr Beth. I still kind of do believe that in some ways right Cooperating is hard, yes, I know, I know. So I think for me that's especially why it's important, for maybe why I've sort of defaulted to making sure my kids know that they can ask for help, because I just never really did. I don't think I don't really remember, but I don't think I did.
Speaker 2:Well, and even as we're talking it's like that phrase while in some ways it's easier, it also as I was kind of just briefly reflecting there it is easier, but it's also kind of lonelier and tired.
Speaker 2:It's lonely and tired when you're just always like I'm just going to do it myself and nobody's going to help me and I'm just doing it myself. And so I think it may be, now that we're having this whole conversation and mini therapy session between Leslie and Beth and anyone who's listening, maybe this is our moment to sort of say hey, yes, sometimes it may be an easier track, but teaching our kids that cooperation is, although harder, maybe a better and healthier path for them in the long run and maybe even for us to share like, hey, sometimes I I'm the only one who cares about doing this well, or I'm the only one who fill in the blank right, and having that conversation with our teenagers I think is really helpful for them and understanding how yeah, I mean how to ask for help, like you're saying, but also how to operate in a group or in a family or in a relationship like all these things will come up for them later, for sure.
Speaker 1:It's funny. Even the voice you use to say nobody cares about it the way I do, or whatever. That was a super cranky voice that you just sort of mimicked and gave as your example, and I think that is representative of what can happen inside, right? Yeah, you do have that attitude of I can just do it myself. It's just easier if I do it myself. You do build up that kind of idea that nobody cares about it as much as I do, or nobody helps me, or if we bring it on ourselves, right, that can still happen. So I really love this idea of especially talking to teenagers about just being helpful and cooperating and how it. I do believe we go farther together, right, it is better when we work together. It may be more difficult, it may take a little longer at the outset and be more challenging, but it is better for all of us. So, yeah, what better way to teach our children that than modeling it ourselves, right?
Speaker 2:So true.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, all right, anything else we want to add before we wrap up?
Speaker 2:today it's okay to mess it up, right, like those things that I said out loud in the cranky voice have like actually happened in my own life. You know lots of times, not just like one time, like lots of times. So I think it's okay, like most things, to mess it up and then try to fix it. You know, like reflect on the better version of you, and what that would look like right now. Is that to apologize? Is that to have a conversation? Is that to say hey, I'm calling a family meeting? To say I'm feeling lonely and tired and it feels like nobody else in this room is making this matter as much as it matters to me. It's okay to mess it up and to fix it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I made that decision all on my own and I should have cooperated and talked to you about it.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1:All right, well, thank you for being with us and chatting about this. We have a couple more months this school year to chat about some other things, but in the meantime, if our listeners want to know more about Core Essentials, they can go to our website, which is coreessentialsorg. You can get a sneak peek of the values that we're going to be talking about the next couple months even on our website, or you can find us on social media at CE Values. And what about you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my website is makewordsmatterforgoodcom and I have a couple of other podcasts where folks can catch me and the work I do. One is called Kids these Days Need Us to Make Words Matter for Good, and the other is called Things you Learn in Therapy, and you can find those on my website as well.
Speaker 1:Excellent Tune. In next month Maybe another mini therapy session will take place.
Speaker 2:Man, I can't wait. It's so good. All right, ciao you.
