Things You Learn in Therapy
Things You Learn in Therapy
Uniqueness: Learning About Others to Discover Yourself
Discovering what makes us each wonderfully unique stands at the heart of this month's exploration. We're diving into the powerful idea that by learning about others, we actually uncover more about ourselves – a concept that creates ripples through every stage of childhood development.
For the littlest ones, uniqueness blossoms when parents simply notice and name those special qualities: "I love how curious you are" or "Your excitement when we play together makes my day." These seemingly small acknowledgments plant powerful seeds of self-awareness that continue growing throughout life.
Elementary years bring fascinating challenges as black-and-white thinking meets the complexity of human difference. Children naturally compare themselves to peers, often concluding "she's good at math and I'm not" without understanding both can be true in different ways. We explore practical strategies for helping children ask questions about others, building social skills while fostering appreciation rather than jealousy.
The conversation extends to those critical teenage years when social comparison intensifies. How do we guide adolescents to celebrate others' achievements without feeling diminished? What does healthy vulnerability look like in friendships? These questions matter deeply as young people navigate increasingly complex social worlds.
Throughout our discussion, we return to a fundamental truth: appreciating uniqueness – both in ourselves and others – requires vulnerability and trust, qualities that develop gradually through thoughtful conversation and modeling. Join us as we explore how parents can nurture these essential skills, creating space for children to embrace what makes them wonderfully, authentically themselves.
What unique qualities do you celebrate in your child? Share your thoughts with us on social media or visit our website for more resources on fostering genuine self-discovery and appreciation.
www.bethtrammell.com
Hey, welcome back everybody. It is February, so we're talking about a new word. This one's exciting. I love this word and I can't wait to dig into this with Dr Beth. So we're going to introduce ourselves and we're going to jump right into talking about our big idea this month. My name is Leslie Bolser and I'm the creative director for Core Essential Values and we do resources and curriculum for schools and families and communities around a word each month and how we can help kids live that out in their lives. And this podcast primarily talks to parents about how to do that at home, how to encourage that with your kids at home. So I'm joined today always by Dr Beth Trammell, who's here to enlighten us on this particular word. So, beth, introduce yourself to our guests.
Speaker 2:Yes, thanks for having me again. I always look forward to our time talking about our words together and I I'm also excited about this word because we've kind of had different you know kind of theme or variations of different words, and this one is, ironically you're going to pick up what it is. Ironically it's kind of different than what we've done. But yeah, so I'm Beth Trumell and I'm a psychologist and a professor of psychology at Indiana University East, where I'm the director of the Master's in Mental Health Counseling Program, and I love to make words matter for good. I love to help other people try to make words matter for good, and that's the name of my website, and so I just love that we get to take a pause each month and try to be intentional and focus on one thing once a month. That might make us just a little bit better. I often call myself a growth promoter, because when I say I'm a growth promoter, because when I say I'm, a psychologist, then people all have a different idea about what that really means.
Speaker 2:But my goal is just to help people be a little bit better today than they were yesterday, and so I love doing it one word at a time, with you.
Speaker 1:That's awesome and that's perfect for what we're going to talk about today, because, you're right, we've talked about some things recently that have been a little bit harder maybe to incorporate in our parenting or in our kids lives, and I think this one is just a really fun twist on it and we can be really positive about it. So the word we're talking about is uniqueness and the way that, if your child is in a school, that's talking about uniqueness, the way they're describing it this month is learning more about others so you can know more about yourself, and I just think that's so cool because it just highlights trying to pick up little parts of other people, little things about them that make them special or that they like or that lights them up right, and then taking that and being able to learn more about yourself and whether you're in the same boat as them or a different boat as them, we can learn a lot about ourselves when we learn about and appreciate things in other people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love this word too, and it really is kind of unique to the other words that we've kind of had before. We've never really had one in this theme around uniqueness, this theme around uniqueness and so I'm excited about it because I think early, when kids are really young, uniqueness is a thing we're trying to teach them about. It is true for everyone, right. It's, hey, paying attention to the things that you particularly love about your preschooler and saying those things out loud. I love that you are curious, I love that you are excited to play, I love that you are loving and snuggly with me in the morning, right, I think uniqueness really starts by us kind of saying things out loud to our kids who are really young that we believe make them unique.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I'm kind of smiling while you're talking about it because it's just a fun thing to think about. You know, parents being able to speak those things around their preschoolers and their young kids, and I want to move into elementary and talk a little bit about that. But I also want to point out that you know, obviously we're aware that if you looked up uniqueness in a dictionary, this way we're applying this or describing this it's not the definition of uniqueness, right, this is not what uniqueness means. This is just the way that we're sort of framing it as we talk to kids in schools this month about a way to apply uniqueness.
Speaker 1:Right, everyone knows that uniqueness is just differences, but this isn't just like pointing them out. This is sort of internalizing them and appreciating them and other people so that you can appreciate things about yourself as well. So, if we think about elementary students, this can be kind of hard, right. They're not quite developmentally ready to understand that there are many different parts of all of us, right. They's still a little bit linear in the way they think about that. So how would you talk to or how would you encourage uniqueness and appreciation of others in an elementary student?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, it's really interesting because elementary students are kind of have very black and white thinking and that's developmentally appropriate. That's where their brain development is, the how do I say this? The sort of the good and the bad about finding uniqueness in other people. Finding uniqueness in other people, learning about others, so I can learn about myself. In elementary school I think we often do that through comparison, right. And so here I am, I'm in third grade, and what I'm learning about myself is that other people are better in math than I am, yeah, and so you kind of get into this.
Speaker 2:And when I say black and white thinking, I mean you kind of get into this, he's good and I'm not, or they're this and I'm the other, yeah, and they forget, because it's too abstract an idea, that both things can be true, right, where there's a variation of truth around different things, they tend to think it's kind of this or that good or bad. And so I think we have to be really aware when we're recognizing uniqueness and other people, pointing out that uniqueness and our friends encouraging our kids who are in elementary school to kind of see and learn about other people around them, ask questions, right, it's a great skill at this age, to teach kids social skills, to learn about other people, ask questions what's your name, what do you like to do on the weekends, kinds of things. But then we have to be really aware that they're going to kind of fall into this way of thinking that is just like well, that's different and that's bad, because that's how I am.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean that's. I think that's really important and it makes me as we transition into older students my kids are a little bit older and I do see I remember those moments of that comparison that you're talking about and how it can lead into even like a jealousy when we're acknowledging the skills or strengths that someone else has. That might make us feel kind of bad about ourselves. So how do you reframe that so that learning more about yourself doesn't make your kid feel bad about it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, this is a great skill to learn for a lifetime, right?
Speaker 2:Like not becoming jealous or having FOMO about what other people are doing or how they're living their life, and so I believe this definition is true, kind of across the board're living their life.
Speaker 2:And so I believe this definition is true, kind of across the board, right, like learning about others so I can learn more about myself.
Speaker 2:So anytime I encounter a person, I feel like as I learn about them, I learn about my own self in a variety of different ways, like what was my initial judgment of them, what was my initial feeling of them? How, you know, did I kind of respond to them? And so I think that that is part of what we're saying is, you know, in relationships there are a lot of processes that take place, actually in both healthy and perhaps not as healthy relationships, and so when we get to this place of being in middle and high school and there's already more you know, kind of inherent competition for friendships or romantic relationships or social media presence or whatever that might look like I think it is an ongoing conversation to say you know, tell me about the people that you're meeting at school or the people in your class, and you know, what are you learning about your friends and how are you reacting to them and what does that teach you about you? And these conversations may feel you know deeper than your teenager may want to go, but I think if you, you may be surprised I guess I'll say it that way that you might not be able to do this every night at the dinner table.
Speaker 2:You know and hey yeah, this is learning about others about you but but I find that my kids because I'm kind of persistently a little bit cringe. They just are sort of like accustomed to mom just being like mom. Here we go with your question of the day again, yeah, and so maybe you create some kind of structure around that to have these conversations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I also I'm thinking about a situation where a young person we know in our community just did something really cool and got a great acknowledgement for it, and so I just love to point out when people get acknowledged or have success because of the hard work that they've done. I'm cringe too with my kids, right, and so I think just making a habit of celebrating the wins that other young people have not in a comparison way for your kid to make them, you know, worried that you're not as proud of them, but I just think it's cool to say, wow, he worked really hard and he did that. That's really great. We should celebrate that for him because that's awesome. I think that helps with that comparison piece too. And acknowledging that some people's uniqueness yeah, maybe they're born with a certain set of gifts or whatever, but a lot of times it's through really hard work, it's through them loving something so much that they put a lot of time and energy in it and then they get a payoff right, which is cool.
Speaker 2:It is cool and I love that you do that and really try to be intentional with that, cause I I think that's such a great lifelong skill too, yeah, that if we can learn to celebrate other people and then realize that someone else's success isn't an indication of my failure or less than or, you know, it's like both can be true Even if you're in direct competition with that person though I would probably argue that most of us who were kind of jealous of are not actually in direct competition with. I think we just kind of jealous of, are not actually in direct competition with. I think we just it's just a skill to kind of hone in, even if you're in great competition, like it's okay to just choose to celebrate them. Yeah, to marvel at something cool, yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So the last piece I want to talk about a little bit is how we're sort of leaning in that direction, but this requires some vulnerability. This requires some sort of letting go of self in a way to be able to learn from yourself when you're learning about others, or learn about yourself when you're learning from others. So anything you want to say to parents about that level of vulnerability.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean for sure, Anytime we're trying to learn from other people, share with other people. It always takes vulnerability to figure out you know, what level of sharing could or should I do with this friend versus that friend. What pieces of myself do I share? And it's this interesting kind of dance, you know, I'm kind of like moving my body back and forth, and I see that in relationships, right, where it's sort of like I've got to give a little to kind of get a little right.
Speaker 1:And vice versa.
Speaker 2:The person you're trying to learn about so you can learn about you. They have to kind of give a little so you can get to learn a little bit. And so, yeah, I mean I think vulnerability is a thing that, like we're saying, for the many other things that we're talking about this episode, it takes time to continue to remember how important that is. That'll be a lifelong thing that you've got to figure out. Who can I trust? How much can I trust with this person? So it's not just I trust them or I don't, but it's I can trust them with this part of me and I can then wait and see what part of them they give me. And that's about the uniqueness of the relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's just what you're describing is a really cool, healthy way of maturing and relationship building, right? That's a really cool sort of way of thinking through that. I love that. This is a great word to talk about Also, especially if you want to just lift up those little funny quirks that your kid has in a really positive way. Now's your moment, right, now's the moment. Lean into that, because they all have them and it's really, you know, it's really fun and special to celebrate those cool things. So we're going to wrap up for today, but I would love for you to join me again next month so that we can talk about another word and help parents think through how to work on that at home with their kids as well. Would love that. So, in the meantime, if folks want to know more about you, where could they find you?
Speaker 2:My website is make words matter for goodcom. That's probably the best place, and then I have two other podcasts that you can find on the website Kids these days need us to make words matter for good, and things you learn in therapy. So if you want to pop on over and check out those episodes, that'd be amazing.
Speaker 1:I love it. And if you want to know more about core essentials, you can find us on our website at core essentialsorg, or on social media at CE values Excellent. Well, we will see you next month and we'll check in again then.
Speaker 2:Sounds great. Ciao, bye. Thank you.
