Welcome to the WIRE Differently podcast where we chat all about how to best support exceptional children.

I'm your host, Holly Blanc Moses, the mom psychologist who gets it.

Today we're talking about three ways to crush unhelpful expectations.

Do you find yourself thinking or saying he or she should be able to or has to or needs to? Do you find yourself expecting that your child should

do what you say the first time you tell him? Do you find yourself expecting that your students should just

be able to stay quiet and seated during instruction? Are you a therapist and you've taught

your clients so many great coping strategies, but they aren't using them during times of overwhelm.

Anytime there's a gap between your expectation and what the child actually does,

you may find yourself experiencing feelings of anxiety, frustration, or maybe even anger.

Here's another example.

If you expect your student to complete the math worksheet during math class, and they

only do half of one problem, you may feel frustrated because obviously there's a gap

between your expectation and what the child actually did. Now, what that means is you are human.

So welcome to the club. We all have expectations and ideas of what should happen. All humans do.

But here's the thing. Expectations not only lead to stress for us, but also tear down children.

Unhelpful expectations lead us nowhere. So, you know, what do we do about that? How do we address this problem?

First, we need to gently notice the expectation,

just with curiosity, without judgment, without criticism of ourselves, we're just going to

gently notice it. Notice the feelings and thoughts that come up when you have an expectation that child doesn't meet it.

Practice again using curiosity.

Notice when you're experiencing that anxiety and frustration I was talking about.

It's hard to do, but the more you practice, the better you'll get.

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