Parent Workshops with Michael Thompson

ISB, in partnership with the PTA, is delighted to welcome Dr. Michael Thompson to ISB and offer parent workshop sessions on Monday, October 24 and Tuesday, October 25, 2022.  

Dr. Michael G. Thompson, author of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Lives of Boys, is a consultant, a New York Times best-selling author and psychologist specializing in children and families. He is the supervising psychologist for the Belmont Hill School and has worked in more than seven hundred schools across the United States, as well as in international schools in Central America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

The summaries of the sessions being offered are below.  Please register for the workshops you are planning to attend here.  You may contact K. Didi supasrin@isb.ac.th in the Learning Design Center (LDC) with any questions you may have.  

Session Summaries:

Monday October 24, 2022 (2:30-4:00 PM)

“Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Lives of Boys” also entitled “The Nature of Boys”

ABSTRACT:   Since the times of Tom Sawyer, boys have puzzled and frustrated both parents and teachers.  “Why doesn’t he seem to care about school?” “Why is he such a minimalist about his work?”  “Why does he always get into trouble?”  “Why do boys always want to play with guns?”  “How do you get boys to talk about their feelings?”  For the last twenty years, educators and parents have been engaged in debate about the best ways to educate boys because boys are falling behind girls in school in all fifty states (and in all the OECD countries).  They are four times more likely than girls to be sent to a school psychologist than girls; they are diagnosed with 60-80% of learning disorders.  Their areas of strength, physical strength, team-building and problem-solving are not as important as verbal skills in the quiet, word-dominated environment of schools.  In this talk, Dr. Thompson gives suggestions to teachers and parents about how to support boys in the early years of school and how to help boys remain open in adolescence.

Tuesday October 25, 2022 (8:15-9:45 AM)

“How to Raise Responsible Children”

ABSTRACT: Dr. Thompson mixes anecdote and clinical experience with research on the outcomes of different parenting styles and comes up with a warm-hearted recipe for providing children with an internal foundation for moral behavior. Early in life every child needs a “secure base;” later a child needs a “framework” around him. Only when he feels securely anchored and contained will a child be able to follow rules consistently. How can a parent provide consistency and how can he or she successfully communicate with his or her child around issues of responsibility? What do we know about the different outcomes of democratic, authoritative and authoritarian parenting? Which method of parenting produces the most competent child? Many parents have heard this talk and felt affirmed and challenged by it. Many teen-agers have heard it and have had to admit that it probably is….well…right.

Tuesday October 25, 2022 (12:50-2:20 PM)

“Best Friends/Worst Enemies: Friendship Development, Popularity and Social Cruelty in Childhood” 

ABSTRACT: Children don’t want adults to be involved in their social lives. They hate it when teachers “interfere.” Yet teachers are witnesses to the exclusion of low-status children in elementary schools and the popularity wars of middle school and they must act to protect the weak. Parents also see the friendship difficulties of their own children. Some take their children’s social ambitions to heart and worry that their children are not popular. Other parents hope the school can protect their children from all social pain.

Social cruelty among kids is one of the most difficult things that adults have to confront in raising or educating children. Experienced teachers can be confused about how to protect a child in class, for fear of putting a rejected or controversial child in “the limelight.” They can also feel defensive when parents of neglected or victimized children come to the school for help.

This presentation walks teachers and parents through the complex social world of childhood and addresses a number of questions: What do social relationships in school predict about happiness in adult life? What is the normal sequence of child friendships, from the parallel play of the two-year-old to the intimate self-disclosure of the adolescent? Why do cliques form and what are the differences between boy and girl groups? Why are children scapegoated and how can their parents and school protect them? Dr. Thompson will draw on research to highlight the differences between friendship and popularity. He makes suggestions about the management of social problems in schools and makes the case that while all children yearn for popularity, it is friendship that helps children survive and thrive.

Tuesday October 25, 2022 (6:00-7:30 PM)

“The Pressured Child: Helping Your Child Find Success in School and Life”

ABSTRACT: “The Pressured Child” is, in fact, a presentation for “pressured parents” who have forgotten what school is actually like. It is a talk for parents who are gripped by worries and misapprehensions about their children’s life in school. In the presentation, Dr. Thompson describes the psychological journey that children experience during their thirteen years in school. He reminds parents that children are almost never judging themselves by grades: they are always monitoring their own development and constantly searching for three things: connection, recognition and a sense of power. He illustrates how children find those in many different arenas of school life. There are three kinds of children in school: 1) those whose journeys are characterized mostly by success, 2) those whose journeys are characterized by a chronic but manageable struggle, and 3) those whose journeys are characterized by fury and despair. Each journey has its own different pressures. Every child is constantly developing strategies for coping with the pressures that he or she feels.

In order to write the book, Dr. Thompson went back to school, following students, seventh graders through seniors, in independent, Catholic, and public schools. In the book and in this talk, he shares stories from the trenches, taking parents and teachers into the school day experience of children, illuminating how they manage their school careers and how the best educators and wisest parents can support them along the way.